Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Inasmuch as the group defined as "the organizations strategic apex" would seem to include the CEO, yes, I interpreted the following as you saying that no CEO has ever seen a paycut:
Look, I get it. You're unhappy that other people are more successful than you are, probably a bit jealous, and you justify this perceived inadequacy by telling yourself that it's unfair. It's quite natural to envy those who have achieved a higher stature while simultaneously wishing for them to fail- we see this all the time in sports, casino gambling, and the like.

But just because someone else has more money than you do does not mean that anyone is being cheated. The rules of life are pretty transparent, and some people, through a combination of determination, luck, and preordained advantage, have played their way to the top. Their success does not diminish you.

2ndGearRubber

When a $9.00 an hour worker needs to decide whether to have car-insurance, or pay electric, that's an issue.

When a mother asks her children - "Do you want 3 meals a day, or 2 meals a day and electric this month?"



1950 didn't have nearly the amount of requirements on an adult. Healthcare, insurance (often state required), uniforms being taken out of pay, etc. Many employers are now trying to keep large staffs with sub 25hours a week schedules. Keeps them from having to comply with healthcare and other state requirements for full-time workers. Now there's 2 jobs, an extra commute, still no benefits, etc.



Keeping workers demoralized and just treading water is the best way to keep a stable work force. Sure, entry level turn over is always happening. But an employee with 1-5 years in, bills, debt based on not making **** and having an unexpected expense, and you've got a lifer. Sure, they're not super motivated, but they NEED that job. So it's easy to treat them like ****.


Not everyone is a fiscal god like those on MT. Some people struggle to pay bills, fight to put food on the table, and support their children. I may not be one of them, but I can at least comprehend other peoples issues.

Poor doesn't equate to lazy. Correlation is not causation. Y(Income)MV

rleete

iTrader: (21)

Right there is part of the problem. Unstable family structure (i.e. no daddy) and several kids by several (absent) fathers. Yet it's racist to point this out.

Stop breeding if you can't afford to have kids!

2ndGearRubber

Nothing racist about it. Deadbeat dads know no race.


The stigma of abortion is still to high, IMO. If you can't afford to take care of a child, you shouldn't bring that child into the world. The birth process alone, in a hospital, costs more than terminating the pregnancy. Of course, religious and social pressures, and a culture of fear/shame, prevent many women from understanding this.




I notice most people say "stop breeding", not "stop having sex". The latter can be quite difficult.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

No one earns min. wage; so it's really a non-issue.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Some people think it's a problem that a person cannot support a family of four on minimum wage.


Other people realize that it's an unrealistic expectation that minimum wage is supposed to comfortably support a family of four. Minimum wage jobs are for kids working part-time, retirees saying "Welcome to WalMart" when you walk in the door, recent immigrants sweeping the floor at night and living ten to an apartment so that they can send money back home, etc.


By demanding that the least amount of money that you can pay someone be sufficient to comfortably support a large family, you are demanding that people who are simply incapable of (or do not need / wish to) earn enough money to support a large family be completely barred from working altogether.



Better that grandma not be allowed to have a job that pays $7 an hour just to get her out of the house / give her something to do after grandpa died and provide her with a little side-money to supplement what she gets from social security and her late husband's military pension.

Ryan_G

iTrader: (8)

Its really quite easy to have sex and not breed without it even coming to an abortion. Hell if you aren't an idiot and can correctly pull out even that method is proven to be very effective. Birth control these days is really cheap if you aren't buying it in quantities of 3 from a gas station.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Tangential to the conversation, but funny:








Serious. Raises in the minimum wage are positively correlated with increases in unemployment, both for the overall workforce as well as for young people who are either working part-time while in school, or just starting out in the workforce:


(source)




Also serious. There exists an ideal equilibrium point for the minimum cost of labor which maximizes the total earnings of all workers. Artificial increases in that cost decrease total employment and also decrease the total earnings of all workers, with the probable outcomes of increased rates of poverty, increased reliance upon social services, and decreased economic output / GDP.


(source)




Same general concept, but with a cat:


(source)




Finally, a few people have suggested various concepts which can be very coarsely summarized as "the standard of living in the 2010s should not be lower than it was in the [1940s / 1950s / 1960s]." In inflation-adjusted terms, the present Federal minimum wage is higher than it was during all of the 1940s and most of the 1950s, and roughly equal to what it was during the early 1960s. It is also higher than during most of the 1980s, 90s and 00s. The period of the late 1960s / early 1970s represented an anomalous condition which was succeeded by a fairly significant recession:


(source)

Sparetire

Demonstrate why? You mean with like some links to info as I just did? Where's that spoon feed pic when I need it?

Directly from what I linked there:

"During our analysis of this charity’s FYE 2011 Form 990, the document revealed that more than half of the Employment Policies Institute Foundation's functional expenses were paid to its CEO Richard Berman's for-profit management company, Berman and Company. The document revealed that, out of total expenses of $2.10 million, $1.17 million were paid to Berman and Company for staff[ing] and operat[ing] the day-to-day activities" of the charity. See relevant pages from the organization's 2011 Form 990 filing via PDF files "EPIFpage8," "EPIFpage10," and "EPIFscheduleL" for more information."

So basically this guy Behrman owns a big advert firm. And he runs EPI. And EPI run ads regarding min wage (see below) that support the views of the advert firms clients. Illegal? No. Bullshit? Yep.

Also from what I linked there:

"What the CBO actually said was that its “central estimate” is that 500,000 jobs would be lost. But the forecast is highly uncertain. The “likely range” is anywhere between a loss of a million jobs and a “very slight” job loss. So the ad’s fortune teller could just as accurately have said, “I see very few people losing their jobs,” based on CBO’s report. That’s just as likely as a million-job loss.

Even the CBO’s “central” estimate doesn’t mean that half a million “people” will lose jobs they have now, as the ad’s fortune teller puts it. Some of those lost jobs would be future employment that fails to materialize, not current jobs that disappear.

Furthermore, the change would take place gradually, between passage and the year 2016, when the $10.10 proposal would take full effect. The CBO’s estimate is of total employment in 2016 with a higher minimum wage, compared with what total employment would be under current law.

The EPI ad’s fortune teller also fails to mention other findings in the CBO report she’s brandishing:
◾Families that are now in poverty would gain $5 billion in real income, moving about 900,000 people above the poverty threshold.
◾Average real (inflation-adjusted) income would increase for families in all income groups below six times the poverty level. (CBO projects the poverty level will be $24,100 for a family of four in 2016.)
◾On the other hand, for families that are at or above six times the poverty level in 2016 — which would be $144,600 or more for a family of four — real income would decrease by 0.4 percent, due mainly to higher prices and lower business profits."

But oh, that's right, all impartial think tanks doing research are 100% on the level if they are also trying to sell products to you or influence policy like the bullshit adds EPI runs in D.C. I am sure they are not biased and can thus be used as a good solid source of impartial data. Just like gluten free products producers

Oh, but we need to look at the quality of the research not the motivations of the researchers right?

"The reliability of EPI's sponsored studies have been questioned. Saul D. Hoffman, a professor of economics at the University of Delaware, for instance, examined the employment data of a 2012 EPI sponsored study and concluded that the limited employment data set that was picked was skewed. Once the employment data set was corrected, the data showed that the increase in minimum wage in New York had no negative effect on employment, the opposite result of what the institute announced in its news release."

Their motives are hardly impartial and their work sucks.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

I read your post twice and failed to find refutation of the data that shows nearly 2/3rds of minimum wage workers receive a raise within their first year on the job.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

NO, because then I wouldn't be making all that much over minimum wage and I would be sad.

Sparetire

No we are talking about your statement that if you show up on time and work hard and take on more responsibility you will be rewarded with raises etc. That's a universal concept no? Not just applicable to min wage? And its a broad inaccurate generalization, as my person experience and the crap quality of the org you sited demonstrates.

I respectfully submit that maybe you are not a typical boss. And its a dead-nuts certainty that there are a ton of bosses out there, particularly those overseeing min wage workers, who are nothing like you at all. For one thing, front line managers often don't determine pay for front line workers, they simply have the ability to kick recommendations up the chain of command. And farther up, they understand the fact that their operations are basically designed around low service levels and easily replaceable people. Meaning raises are not really all the necessary to keep things going.

Not to toot my horn, but I am the guy that shows up early. As in 15-20 minutes every day. (before someone asks, I am currently chained to a desk waiting on calls and multi-tasking while I do it LOL). I have taken on more responsibility at a pretty steady rate at most of the jobs I have ever had. And guess what, that bears next to 0 correlation with pay raises received except my current job (which just gave me one ). None of my min wage type jobs as a student involved raises and I was the guy who filled in on weekend shifts, did the nitty-gritty crap, etc.

But frankly this is all a tangent anyway, a response to the stats that 2/3rds of all min wage workers get a raise within a year. That org is BS, that stat comes from a BS org, and the stat is BS. Burden of proof for a stat is on the person using it, not the rest of the world to disprove it. Prove that EPI did not use skewed data as they have in the past to create it.

73% of all frogs like country music. I bet I can find an org to say that and then you must prove me wrong.

I mean honestly, everyone is arguing that min wage is bad and that labor could be had cheaper if not for it, then turning around and saying that companies will willingly pay more. I think your basing your notions on this idea that most people making min wage are lazy. And those that are not will quickly be promoted out. IME, that not true. About the same breakdown of lazy to hard-working as most other groups in fact, with less benefit to being a good employee.

Sparetire

What data? Post it up. Links to a shady assed org does not a data point make. That's the damned point.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

It's right there in the study that I linked to. Page 3, I think. You must have missed the big chart somehow.

Sparetire

That graph is interesting for two reasons: 1) It shows at least the appearance of a correlation between low real wage and high unemployment, the opposite of what many would argue. the last few years, the early 80 and early 70s for example show a decline in real wage and an increase in unemployment. Conversely, high points in min wage correspond to low unemployment. All you really need to do is argue about effects over time to them say that maybe the high-wage/low unemployment was unsustainable and cause the opposite condition. And then we are in la-la land.

Frankly I don't think raising min wage will raise employment, but the graph shows some pretty funky stuff and I don't think it supports your argument much.

All In really take from that graph is that if we had a pretty average min wage in real wage terms it would be a tad over 8 bucks an hour and our unemployment should then average something like 6% assuming there was this huge causality going on. Which would support perhaps a more modest increase in min wage than what I was saying.

gungriffin

Ha ha this is a fun thread. Wonder when everyone but the 3-5 people still trying to convince each other their point is correct will realize that they are almost the only ones posting? It hasn't happened yet, but I look forward to daily checkups.

Lets toss this in the ring too. I didn't really see much mention about government assistance in the form of food stamps, refundable tax credits for kids, state day care assistance and medicaid/health insurance credits.

Sparetire

That's because its related but separate, and yeah, a lot of it is utter B.S. Read somewhere that we spend something on the order of 12K per year on every man woman and child below poverty line in this country. And we still have tons of people below poverty. Frankly I'd rather see those that work get paid more and taxes be lower to help out the companies paying workers more.

gungriffin

I could see some merit in what you are saying. The real issue is there are so many people who have vested interests in just keeping the status quo.

It is not terribly difficult to find a job making more than minimum wage. The real question is would more money help someone incapable of understanding how to help themself fiscally in the first place. Most people who lack the ability to find jobs higher than min wage also lack the ablility to understand personal finances. Just playing devils advocate, if min wage were increased from 7.45 to 10, how many people do you think are going to have a new 50" flat screen tv in short order? Unfortunately I would imagine a lot.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Minimum wage workers account for 4.7 percent of hourly paid workers in 2012


Like I said: non-issue.




God it must be tough for those 16-19 year olds to support a family of four...





maybe if they got into a line of work that didn't require flipping burgers?

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

speaking of poverty:

In 2012, there was about 1 million workers under the age of 19 making min wage or below.

In 2012, 16.1 million children under the age of 18 were in poverty.


question:

how will raising the min. wage of 1 million people, or roughly 2% of the total workforce, help 16 million, others of that same group, get out of poverty?


I'm going out on a limb and I'm going to say that working at BELOW the min. wage would be a HUGE step forward in this group exiting poverty...