Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Again, this argument presupposes that the demand for fry cooks will increase if employers are able to pay them less. And again, I point out that already a surplus of fry cooks in the labor market, and that restaurant owners already employ as many fry cooks as they require to satisfy the market need for fry cookery. Thus, decreasing the amount which they are paid will have no effect other than to increase the net profit margin on the sale of french fries.


EDIT: I see your little ninja edit there. It will take me some time to read and digest all of that.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

unemployement is like 500000%, there is surplus of demand for ANY job.


the problem is finding americans out there that can read and write and our worth the investment of $7.50 an hou rin this economy.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Yes, but even in the very best of times, there has never been a scarcity of poorly educated, unskilled laborers.


Actually, I can offer up another relevant, real-world example for you.


Here in California, we have a great panoply of fruits and nuts, both of the literal and figurative sort. The literal sort are a marketable commodity, and there is a significant industry built on their harvesting.

Now, handwaving over any idealistic notions of social injustice, it so happens that quite a large amount of the harvesting of fruits and nuts is performed by migrant workers (both illegal and legal) who operate within a sort of cash-based grey market, outside of the watchful eyes of such entities as the IRS or the Department of Labor.

On the whole, those working within this shadow economy are paid considerably less than minimum wage.

Now, insofar as the idea that Americans are willing to work for substantially less than minimum wage, how many white people would you expect one typically sees harvesting lettuce or picking strawberries 'round these parts? (Remember that San Diego County borders Mexico.)

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

how educated are the whites compared to the browns?

also, those mexicans are willing to risk life and limb to travel here to the US to work under the table for minimum wage and send that money back to mexico to support their familes.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

The strawberry and tomato picking illegals in Florida make more than minimum wage. They work for Mexican bosses that contract with the farmer to pick the field for a price. The workers are paid by that boss. The boss doesn't pay medicare, SS, medical insurance, or any of the other bullshit that legitimate employers have to pay. The workers also work harder than any standard *****-*** American high school student would be willing to work. So, they are more productive and have lower overhead than standard American minimum wage-type workers and they are actually paid about $10-12 an hour. I know these figures for a fact because my next door neighbors were illegal alien roofers and we had this discussion a few years ago before they had to move on (yes, I live next door to a colorful rental property).

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

As with everything in life, there is undoubtedly great variance, and this seems to infer that all Mexican fruit-pickers are uniformly educated, as are all whites non fruit-pickers.

No doubt some whites are better educated than some Mexicans who harvest fruit. I would posit that some Mexicans who harvest fruit might be better educated than some whites who do not.


The point is that if high-school kids are having such an impossible time finding summer employment, and are willing to do unglamorous things for $2 an hour, then why are they conspicuously absent from the avocado orchards and strawberry fields?

In other words: they are not, as you presuppose, unable to find work. They are merely unwilling to do menial tasks for low wages. Decreasing or eliminating the minimum wage will not change this.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Studys show that: "each 10 percent increase in a state or federal minimum wage has decreased employment by 2.5 percent; for Hispanic males, the figure is 1.2 percent. But among black males in this group, each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage decreased employment by 6.5 percent."

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

here's a good read too:

Back in 1996, when President Clinton was pushing for an increase in the federal minimum wage, his chief of staff went on TV and complained that "we're talking about a lousy 90 cent increase."

One can only imagine his response to criticisms of the six-cent minimum wage hike coming to Florida on June 1. It's just a lousy six cent increase! But let's figure out what those six cents represent to businesses.

Take a grocery store. Let's say they average 15 workers making the minimum wage on the clock at any given time and are open for 15 hours a day. An extra six cents an hour is a lousy $13.50 per store per day. Multiply that by 365 days and you get to a lousy $4,927.50 per year in extra costs. What's a lousy five grand per year?

Or consider your favorite restaurant. Due to a quirk in Florida law, restaurants are only allowed to count about $3 of a server's tips toward their hourly compensation; the rest is assumed to be a "gift" — not income earned on the job (the IRS feels differently, of course). That means, for a restaurant with 25 servers each working 30 hours a week, a lousy six cents in extra labor costs per hour equals a lousy $2,340 per year in extra payroll.


Here's the rub: A grocery store can't make up the lousy five grand in new costs just by selling a lousy five grand worth of food; ditto for a restaurant.

Businesses in both of these industries keep only two to three cents in profit for every dollar they sell. A typical grocery store has to sell $250,000 of groceries and a typical restaurant has to sell $78,000 of food to generate a few thousand dollars in profit.

Making up extra cost

To put it simply, covering a lousy couple grand in new labor costs isn't as easy as it seems. If a store can't offset those higher labor costs, maybe they'll have to get by with one less shelf-stocker or server per shift and ask the remaining employees to work a bit harder.

Companies are limited in the ways they can react: Customers are sensitive to price increases — think about the last time you drove slightly out of your way to save a dime on a gallon of gas — which means increasing labor efficiency and cutting back on customer service are the only viable options.

This is why you've begun to see more self-checkout lanes at grocery stores. Instead of raising prices or selling more stuff, grocery stores are cutting back on worker hours by reducing service and introducing automation. Restaurants are rolling out devices that will allow customers to electronically order and pay at the table. The result? One or two fewer servers needed per shift.

Why do you think you bus your own table at McDonald's and serve yourself soda at Burger King? It doesn't make economic sense for the restaurant to pay someone to do the same.

If even one part-time employee is dropped from each of the thousands of restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses that rely on minimum wage labor, what do you think that will do to Florida's still-too-high 11 percent unemployment rate, or its 30 percent teen unemployment rate? It certainly won't help matters, which is bad news for summer job seekers.

Vulnerable groups hit worst

These unintended employment consequences hit vulnerable groups the hardest. A new study released by the Employment Policies Institute, authored by labor economists at Miami University and Trinity University, finds that the negative impact of minimum wage increases on black young adults are more than twice as large as the impact on white young adults. In some states, the employment consequences of recent increases in the minimum wage were actually worse than the consequences of the "Great Recession."

But don't tell that to the activists. Groups like the National Employment Law Project — which served as co-counsel in a lawsuit against the state Labor Department that resulted in the coming six cent wage hike — would have you believe that labor costs don't factor into hiring decisions. In defense of these whoppers, they brandish one-off studies from activist economists and claim that they invalidate a many-decade research consensus that points in the opposite direction.

How flawed are these "studies"? In the most recent one that activists are promoting, states in a Census Division — say, the mid-Atlantic division of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — could simultaneously raise their minimum wage to $50 an hour or higher and the study would register no job loss related to the wage mandate.

Another favored tactic of these groups is to trot out a list of 650 economists who have signed on to a statement declaring that small increases to the minimum wage would not have "the adverse effects that critics have claimed." Unfortunately for proponents of a higher minimum wage, that list isn't all it's cracked up to be: over half the signatories don't have a PhD, or don't specialize in labor economics.

Ramifications on young

The hard truth on minimum wage hikes is that they cause less-experienced workers such as young adults to lose their jobs. And these young adults are losing out on more than just pocket money. They're missing out on valuable life skills picked up in the "invisible curriculum" that comes with early work experience, little socialization skills that we often take for granted such as learning the importance of customer service, setting priorities, and cooperating with coworkers as a team effort.

With summer fast approaching, the loss of opportunities to enter the job market has even more unintended costs. Studies have shown that unemployment early in life has serious consequences later on. An economically disadvantaged teen that can't find a job this summer is at a higher risk of dropping out of high school, or getting into legal trouble. And teens of all backgrounds that suffer a long spell of unemployment now run the risk of lower wages and more employment troubles in future years.

Higher unemployment rates. Young people with damaged career prospects. Businesses straining with extra costs in tough economic times.

But hey. It's just a lousy six cents.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

" In 1954 the minimum wage laws were changed to apply to all sectors of the economy, not just manufacturing, and were soon drastically raised. "


lets look at the trend:




whoopsie!

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

Requesting thread title change to "Braineack hates black people".

On par with what sixshooter said, the illegals are paid less and work harder than any ******* american would. I know from experience cause I've worked hand and hand with them. Sometime we have to get a few extra guys and via a "boss" we get them. They are paid decent, but no american would work 12 hours pouring concrete all day for that pay. Let alone come back the next day for more!

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

why?

i want to make minimum wage $0.00. The NCAAP will praise me. Most black organizations fought hard in 1990 against the increase in minimum wages. The only people fighting for them are union lobbyist.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Slayer

iTrader: (6)

It may be true in many cases, but I think there are enough exceptions to say this is an "unfair" blanket statement. Around here, the men standing in front of home depot start at $12/hr. Two years ago it was $14. In almost every case, they have no tools, no skills, no English, no transportation, and they expect lunch to be provided. Further, in my experience hiring these folks, it’s common that they make expensive mistakes, either from lack of experience, lack of intelligence, lack of communication, or all 3. I’m not saying the day-laborers which commonly loiter in front of hardware stores are the same as experienced concrete contractors or arborists or roofers; my point is they seem to demand a high wage for very low quality work.
Instead, I have a 16 year old neighbor kid who will do anything from removing a dead rat in the crawl space to cleaning my gutters and mowing my weeds. He’s happy with $10/hr., and I give him performance incentives and bonuses if he works long days or if he’s lucky enough to bludgeon a gopher with a shovel. He brings his own brown-bag lunch, hardly takes breaks, speaks perfect English and seems to learn quickly from his infrequent mistakes. Am I exploiting him at $10? I don’t think I am. He’s free to quit or ask for a raise at any time. He's seemingly happy to earn $10/hr under the table with a walking-distance commute while he gains work experience and learns a few low-level skills such as sharpening a lawn mower blade or gluing up PVC for irrigation. Sidenote: He has two buddies who are asking him if they can work for me, too.
Maybe it’s atypical around here, but the point is there are a lot of Hispanics who are expecting higher wages than many of the Caucasian highschool kids I’ve interacted with lately. Even the female Hispanics want more; my Mom’s housecleaner won’t sweep the floor for less than $15/hr. And she says so with pride. Good for her, really. But I won’t pay it. For that price, I’ll do it myself. Sidenote: She rolls an Excursion with big shiny wheels; gas is $4.21 today.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Seriously, Joe, I don't understand your objection -- you claim demand for low-skilled labor is static and inelastic. But it clearly isn't. There aren't a fixed number of McDonald's in the world: they open and close individual restaurants according to customer demand and market feasability. You also claim that burger prices are relatively fixed, but to anyone that has watched the "Dollar Menu" become the "$1.40 Menu" or the "$1.75 Menu" over the last few years, that's also patently untrue. If Burger King is charging $1.50 for their value burger, and McDonald's can advertise $1.00 value burgers while maintain their profit margin (because of lower payroll costs), that's an advantage. If McDonald's does higher volume, they can open more locations (or hire more man hours per location).

When you boil it down to one individual business, prices and jobs and wages look fairly static and inelastic. But that's the whole point -- we're not suggesting that one McDonald's location is going to add 5 jobs. But maybe 1 job is added per 5 McDonald's locations. And another 1 job per 5 Burger King locations. And another 1 job per 5 Wendy's locations. The aggregate level is elastic, and lower labor costs can and do increase demand.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

cool story bro. I bet the Bagel place made lot of profits now.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

No, acutally they sold the business because it started losing money after they had to increase food prices to compensate.

It is no longer in business under the new owner.

Vashthestampede

iTrader: (17)

A white high school kid is leaps and bounds different from a Brazilian grown man with a wife and 2 kids. When I was a kid I mowed lawns and raked leaves for probably a dozen different neighbors. The money wasn't anything to brag about, but a little here and there sure adds up. But just like you say about your neighbor kid, I was willing to do the work. No doubt there's Americans looking to do work, but to find ones willing to do hard manual labor, day after day, week after week are far and few.

What I'm getting at is the hard working illegals are working for whatever they can get, most of them. Some of them have been "Americanized" and they want more. Those guys usually fall wayside and end up working for another contractor for less, then eventually go back to where they came from (Mexico, Brazil, etc). I've worked with guys that were paid $8hr and others that were paid $15hr. For the most part they all work the same. Point is they show up the next day. They don't do it for a week and then say "**** this I quit" like Americans do.

I wish it wasn't like that and I could say otherwise, but from my experience, Americans want the easy jobs or the top paying ones. Pretty soon all the old school contractors and laborers will be dead and gone leaving the next generation to take over. Now how many kids out of highschool want to swing a hammer 60 hours a week at $10-$12hr? When they could just as easily go work at Target or Walmart for the same pay and hang out and **** off all day.

This isn't a blanket statement and I'm not saying this is how it is everywhere for everyone. I'm speaking on my own personal experience and beliefs.

When I work with the Brazilian guys we get **** done like animals. ******* pure hard work all day long stopping once or twice throughout the day. When I work with a guy my age just like me I'm ready to snap his neck because they usually ******* whine about how hard the work is, meanwhile they don't even work hard! If the pay was equal to that of a office worker or something alike, I doubt there'd be as much complaining going on though. Its the difference in pay for the trades compared to the cushy indoor jobs that keep people away.

r808

iTrader: (7)

Can we hold off on the racism?











I'd prefer to save it in order to talk about how elitist the japanese have been to the Koreans.

sjmarcy

Interesting graph. Obama fixed all that right?

sjmarcy

Careful there, if something is factual then it is not an issue of prejudice. It's then a matter of fact on which the present PC climate restricts discussion.