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Interesting video explains problems with the minimum wage.

hah anyone that takes a job that pays minimum wage is prolly worthless but if they take that job and slam it like an old screen door they won't be making seven seventy five an hour for long?
 
$135 a company car and four weeks paid vacation!
 

Why would you think that if someone is worth $7.25, then they will be worth $10. RTW states allow each employer and employee to decide their worth, That is called the market system. That is how it should be. No one other than myself and a prospective employer have the right to make that call.

You are simply wrong about everyone deserving a living wage. The only "deserve" is the equal right to pursue a living wage.
 

Germany has a all union workforce, and much better labor laws than USA.

How about we adopt in USA this "zero min wage" and ALL other German labor laws......LMAO
 

Germany's unemployment is at 5.4, Australia's is at 5.7, America's is at 7.6.

Seems to me that there is very little correlation between minimum wage and unemployment on an international scale.
 



If the prevailing wage today was $10.00 an hour, would they not still have the same jobs?
 
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Why do you keep insisting that these people cannot do the jobs that they were hired to do? If they can do the job at one rate, they can continue to do their jobs at a higher rate....
 
wbcoleman said:
Six weeks!
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ok my final offer $140 a company car and eight weeks paid vacation and all the State and Government holidays off
take it or I'll hire a half dozen wetbacks and pay them under the table.
 
Juanita said:
If the prevailing wage today was $10.00 an hour, would they not still have the same jobs?
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No in fact with the new healthcare law just going into effect they just lost their jobs and the company brought in a temp agency.
 
Krhazy said:
I'd say the video is an accurate summary of something.
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Basic economic theory.
Krhazy said:
But it ignores the actual questions involved in the minimum wage debate, which are:

1. What is (or should be) the value of the services?

2. Can employers handle that increase in cost?
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1. The value is set by the free market. Or at least it should be. When we determine what the value (what minimum wage should be) and ignore the market, we run the risk of what the video shows happening.

2. Employers can handle the increase in costs as long as their consumers can handle the increase in costs. If the consumers refuse to pay the increased costs, then the employer has to make a choice as to where to cut costs to get the price of the product/service down to an acceptable level by the consumer. The video covered that as well. It is also a reason that the market share of certain US made products is not as high as it used to be. Consumers would rather buy a cheaper foreign made product than the more expensive domestic product where the employer is required to pay higher wages due to unions or prevailing wage laws, and the material the employer has to buy to make his product are higher for the same reasons, making it impossible for the employer to lower his products cost to a level where they can regain market share. The problem with minimum wage in this scenario is that the products sold by most employers that pay minimum wage are also the employers that sell to lower wage earning consumers. Meaning that if the employer raises his prices to cover increased labor costs, his lower wage earning customers may not be able to afford the same products that they once could. Raising minimum wage will not raise all wages. It will actually reduce the purchase power of most lower wage jobs that are higher than minimum wage given that product costs will increase, but their income will not.

See the correlation?

It isn't abstract. It's based on basic economic theory.

Krhazy said:
I would say it should be viewed as a cautionary video more than anything else.
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I agree with that.

There are some here that focused on the $100.00 example in the video, without understanding it was what is called "reduction to the ridiculous" which a practice used to make complex theories and facts easier to understand.

How many people have enough discretionary funds to pay off their house, or to sell to gain the finances to buy the home in the first place? The main difficulty in the scenario you propose is that the increases in labor cost to product cost are not consistent or proportional when divided across the population as a whole.

I do like your thought process however.

All that said, Since we already have a minimum wage law, I do think that minimum wage is too low. We just need to be prepared for the inevitable problems that will arise. Higher poverty rates and less buying power by the lower wage earners in society.
 
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274ina said:
Germany has a all union workforce, and much better labor laws than USA.

How about we adopt in USA this "zero min wage" and ALL other German labor laws......LMAO
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That is completely, and entirely incorrect. Germany does NOT have an all union workforce, and there are laws AGAINST compulsory union membership. Because they can't force people to join unions, the unions actually have to try to represent the people. They may VOLUNTARILY join a union, which will negotiate salaries.

So no, there is no minimum wage, no compulsory union membership, AND their unemployment is lower.
 
Juanita said:
If the prevailing wage today was $10.00 an hour, would they not still have the same jobs?
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:shrug: probably not. They probably never would have been hired in the first place, in fact, and their lives would be harder than they even are now.
 
Juanita said:
Why do you keep insisting that these people cannot do the jobs that they were hired to do? If they can do the job at one rate, they can continue to do their jobs at a higher rate....
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They could continue to do so, certainly. They could keep performing their labor at a million dollars an hour. What they can't do is provide value-added over the cost to hiring and maintaining them at those rates, meaning that employing them constitutes a loss for the employer, meaning that employers who hire them will lose in competition, watch their business fail, and have to fire all their workers.

But I can't help but notice that you didn't answer my question. Why is your response to the fact that my sister is a low-education, low-skill worker just starting out in life who can't command higher salaries "well screw her, fire her ass"? Why shouldn't she (and her brothers) be given a chance to start working, gain skills and experience, self-improve, and move up lifes' ladder? Why are you so keen on trapping them at the bottom by moving the bottom rung of that ladder out of their reach?
 

That's called exponential growth... You should stick to politics, economics isn't your forte...


Tim-
 


To be honest, I argue the opposite. The best thing the liberals could do for the poor is to eliminate the minimum wage in a declining economy. Right now those evil bastards we call corporate America are riding the pines. Welfare and all of those 121 entitlements actually make working for minimum wage a losing proposition. Eliminating the MW would cause all those people to either go on welfare or take more welfare, and live off it exclusively like so many do. Now, when McDonald's can't hire anyone at the threshold of working for a living of sucking the teat for a living, what do you suppose ole McDonalds will be forced to do?

See, this is why liberals are always wrong headed about achieving their goals. You want higher wages, fine, eliminate the MW, and it will happen relatively quickly. Good way to suck in the republicans along with you, and they wouldn't know what hit them.. A double whammy for you liberal types.



Tim-
 
By the way, anyone wanting to see what the true effects of manipulating the MW will do simply need to look at the costs of goods in Canada to that of the cost of goods in America? Take any electronics as an example.. Any produce, at the super market.. Are we to believe that a laptop make by HP, manufactured mostly in Asia costs more in Canada than it does in the US, when the dollar is almost on par?

Tim-
 
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I'm not sure where you're going with this.
Are you saying the same products cost more in Canada than the USA?
That this increased price is due to Canada's higher MW?
 
Hicup said:
Now, when McDonald's can't hire anyone at the threshold of working for a living of sucking the teat for a living, what do you suppose ole McDonalds will be forced to do?






Tim-
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Hire illegal immigrants?
 

You're concluding that no one would be willing to work for less than minimum wage - already not true, people do it all the time.
 
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????
You seem to be arguing against yourself.
 
Is he winning or losing?
 
Hicup said:
That's called exponential growth... You should stick to politics, economics isn't your forte...


Tim-
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Actually it is not called exponential growth. Exponential growth involves growth at a rate over time. This is talking about the relative growth rates as the result of a discreet event. Nice try, but clearly economics isn't your forte...
 
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