Any thoughts about increasing Minimum Wage?

by journey-on 49 Replies latest jw friends

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  Brother Apostate

  Oh, and one more thing to make it all happen succesfully:

  Eliminate all taxes on the first $1 million per year per wage earner, and the first $1 million per year profits for all businesses. This would encourage everyone with any drive, ambition, intelligence and potential to start their own business, which would create much more real competition and would ignite the economy and worker morale to ensure success, rather than the current state of stacking the deck against small businesses by over taxation.

  BA- Think outside the box.
• 

  wanderlustguy

  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.

  Not personal here, but this is BS. You assume companies are run by people with morals like you, sometimes they are...but not always. Want to know why this wont work? Check your American history before these things were put into place. It couldn't be any easier to start a business right now...COULD NOT BE EASIER. $100.00 and a good idea get it going...I live it every day, have for over 2 years.
• 

  Brother Apostate

  It couldn't be any easier to start a business right now...COULD NOT BE EASIER. $100.00 and a good idea get it going...I live it every day, have for over 2 years.

  Whatever sector you are in is an anomaly. As has already been pointed out in this thread, the tax, workers comp, liabilty, and other obstacles to starting your own business in this country currently stack the deck against you. Want to see the ability for nearly anyone with a good idea and ambition succeed in their own business? Then, at a minimum, the tax obstacles need to be eliminated. The history you refer to still had the same obstacles in place, plus there were no anti-trust laws back then. What this country needs is a small business incubation program. The best and most succesful way to get there is to eliminate all taxation on profits less than $1 million/yr. BA
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  worldtraveller

  Wal Mart became the largest corp by getting product made at the lowest possible price in the world, and by......? What else?
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  owenfieldreams

  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.

  How do you know what we make? You have no idea. In my case, I earn well below the median income for the area that I live in, and I am STILL opposed to the idea of a minimum wage set by the federal government.
• 

  worldtraveller

  Good for you.
• 

  5go

  Don't like the minimum wage go to China.

  ---

  I would be willing to do away with the minimum wage under one stipulation each worker becomes an equal partner in the corporation with an equal say in how it is run and an equal share in the profits. Doubt any business owners would do it willingly though. In fact to them this would be worse than a minimum wage. Though it would be the fairest system even to you righties.

  ---

  Thing is there is an on going attempt by corporations to keep wages low one way or another in order to keep the upper classes profits up at the cost of the lower and middle classes. Which is the reason we need a minimum wages and income redistribution to keep the upper class from becoming the ruling class. Which sadly in the US it may be to late mainly thanks to Reagan's and Bush's pro-upper class policies.
• 

  Highlander

  5go,

  If you worked for me at minimum wage and the government came in and increased your wage. I would fire you and hire a higher skilled worker. Is it because I don't like you? No. It's because I want to get my money's worth out of my employee. Since you did nothing to better yourself and only waited for Uncle Sam to force me to pay you more, I will instead find a way to get rid of your lazy ass and hire somebody that has higher skills and a better education.

  A higher minimum wage will not result in a better lifestyle for you. It will result in you having a great difficulty finding a job, or being unemployed.

  The best thing you can do for yourself is to find your passion and chase after it. Get an education if you can. Don't just complain about money and not having enough of it. Do something about it.

  Let's also be very clear here. I don't have an education. I don't have any special skills. What I do have is a work ethic. I work my ass off. Because I don't have an education I'm going to have to work much harder than everyone else and just maybe I'll make something of myself. At this point I live in a tiny apartment, I drive an older car and I have debt to repay. I am anything but bigoted towards unskilled worker as I consider myself to be underskilled at best, unskilled at worst.
• 

  dinah

  A minimum wage of 10-12 dollars is a little high. There have been two times in my life I've worked for minimum wage. Once when I was a teen, then again in my mid twenties when I went to work for McDonalds.

  The experience at McDonalds taught me that you do get paid what you are worth if you will actually work. We had a very "hands-on" owner/operator. I stayed at minimum wage for about two weeks, was promoted to management in about 4 months. That was how our owner worked. If you can to work when you were supposed to, and worked while you were there, he would give you a raise.

  Minimum wage jobs tend to have a very high turnover rate. It costs a company money to hire and train folks. We would usually have to hire about 8-10 people at a time because out of those, only 2 would actually come to work. It was alot of paperwork to obtain two good employees. Those that actually stayed and would come to work always got raises every 3 months.

  I think the problem is really all the corporations sending all the manufacturing work to China and Mexico. They don't pass the savings along to us, it goes to the CEO's and shareholders. The working-class that used to be the backbone of America are falling by the wayside.

  A global minimum wage would make sense, but American corporations would fight that and with all their money and political power they would defeat that idea.
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  owenfieldreams

  Didn't we just raise the minimum wage in this country(US)? In fact, George W Bush is the one that signed it into law. I thought it went from $5.15 to $6, and is scheduled to go up again next year to over $7/hr?? This illustrates my whole point--even though we just raised it, the same people are trying to get it raised again.