(if this topic is in violation of or becomes in violation of the guidelines, feel free to smite the topic to smitherines)
I recently heard of the upcoming october strikes and I got reminded of how few hours people get in the first place from my friend having her hours cut and looking at a 2nd job and possibly a loan to pay for things she can’t afford now.
What do we think?
(I will explain my point of view in the replies but I want an unbiased question with a legitimate situation as an example of current problems)
It depends if we are talking about it on a societal or individual level. On a societal level a higher minimum wage does nothing at all since it just will inevitably just raise the prices until the higher minimum wage has the same purchasing power as the previous level (sans inflation and other economic forces).
On a personal level it is always better to be rewarded more for your individual effort and a higher then minimum wage is a good way for an employer to give a tangible indication of how much value you bring to the organization.
what is the average amount of hours people actually work? Most of my friends talk about wanting more hours. I like the triangle. minimum wage being the “current best option” seems to be the biggest problem… with no current “easy” way to solve it. We could definitely solve it, but people would have to accept the change and many checks and balances against these huge corporations would have to be put in place, things would have to be handled differently based on how big the business is, yada yada. A decent minimum wage is good, but a high minimum wage will encourage under the table business in order for some business’ to simply even exist due to how much more they would have to pay people vs how much money the job is actually pulling in/worth. Big yikes, it’s rough. There should be a bottom line, but like most things, it is massively too generalized due to lack of care, lack of budget, and lack of acceptability by the public.
Many many more things should be based on individual levels, but it leads to a much more complex structure that cannot be supported by the budget and many people are shitheads and will get jealous they aren’t getting what someone else is getting despite not putting in anything towards it. As someone who had adhd going through school, general structures compared to individual structures are a disaster in both directions. :<
A decent living wage for every single job is not possible, simply due to the nature of the job. If you could live comfortably off of pushing carts at walmart, why ever strive for more? A lot of jobs do not need higher minimum wages, but simply more hours AVAILABLE and not necessarily pushed onto them. Many jobs are side hustles and not for ones only income anyways (highschool kids) but often many people with no skill and mental illness end up having to take these jobs due to nothing else being doable, and now they need a living wage and actual benefits.
It is even less that then the simple fact that business has a certain amount it has to make (to remain functional), a certain amount it need to make (to grow), and a certain amount it wants to make (to increase investors and pay the leaders). Labor costs are a cost against gross profit that has to be paid so if you raise the average cost per hour either the company will cut hours till the cost is relatively the same (either through less workers or less hours per worker) or it will raise the the gross profit (cost to the consumer) to cover the difference. Feelings factor very little into the cold calculations of what is required for a company to succeed or even exist.
All this being said I personally would like to see less of a gap between what a company wants to make and what a company has/needs to make. I would love less compensation to incompetent executives and for financial markets to understand that year over year growth is eventually unobtainable unless you want a cyberpunk dystopian future where we have extra territorial mega corporations that control every aspect of their workers lives… but that is not the world we live in.
Yes this much is true. Mobile games are such a good representation of this, they take almost nothing to make and have MASSIVE profits that never go back into the game. If companies weren’t so hell bent on the biggest profits possible and so stubborn towards a smaller profit, these shifts in structure would be much easier. Profits are important, but too much profit is bad for all but 1. Everyone charging as much as they can (a healthy profit is different than a lust for greed) for everything everywhere and slowly raising prices for no reason or due to other people raising their prices for no reason means the costs to run a business is much higher than it needs to be as well. Greed is a ring of fire.
Many of these issues are based on human nature and people not being as good as they could be. Until that changes, we will have to fight against the people who refuse to care about anyone but themselves. That is most people. If people held themselves accountable to change, and making sure they stay on the side of good, many things would be much better than they are. People will always do bad things, it’s a balance, but if we could cut out everything negative that is done sanely with understanding and the ability to easily change, we would really start getting somewhere. Good luck with that though, the average human gives no fucks about being their best self and half the population is below that, with at least half of humans above average just being better at becoming shitheads as they have more intelligence.
It kinda depends… If you’re working at a higher wage (say $7.25/hour, as that’s the federal minimum wage in the US) and getting 40 hours a week, you’re looking at $290/week. Not much, but minimum wage is supposed to be really low skill jobs, things that high schoolers can do to make some extra cash while they’re in school.
If we increase that to $15/hour, but slash the hours in half(cause an employeer is going to have to do one of two things to make up for the more then doubled wages), you’re looking at $300/week. Wow, an extra $10/week for half the work, right? That’s before taxes kick in. That $10 suddenly really doesn’t mean jack when your bills are now higher (cause you’re now spending more time at home, using more energy), you don’t really have more money to spend to go enjoy, cause you’ve got more time on your hands, but not more money, and you might have the same work load in a shorter period of time(due to trying to keep from having to hire more people, and cutting coverage). The alternative for the employer is balancing the increased payroll budget with higher prices. So now you’re at 30 hours, $450/week, but now the things you buy cost more, and you may still have less coverage, meaning a bigger work load due to less people.
On another note, those who are already at or above that new minimum wage? Yeah, chances are, their pay won’t be going up either. So say you’re a supervisor at a grocery store, and you’re at $15/hour. Next thing you know, all your subordinates are getting paid the same as you, and you have less coverage, and you’ve got a lot more responsibility then your subordinates. Probably feeling like you’re getting shafted, right?
This isn’t to say higher pay is a bad thing, but it shouldn’t be forced. There are ways to get a better paying job. Sometimes you gotta stick with something that sucks for a while to get to it. I just went from being a lead at Dollar General, getting paid $11/hour (after a $.50 raise) to $27.68/hour validating installs on reefer trailers. It took 2.5 years of IT training at Job Corps that kinda sucked, and working my butt off, sometimes working multiple jobs where I’d be working 40+hours/week not including travel time for at least one of them, and getting on with a temp agency and working multiple jobs for them. It wasn’t fun, but I’m making more in ~20 hours now then I was pulling overtime with Dollar General. Closest I got with DG was when I worked over 60 hours in a week vs 30.25 hours with this job, and I still got paid almost $100 more after taxes with this one. So yes, it can help to have something higher paying, particularly if the reduced hours don’t offset the pay. Just remember that it is a give and take transaction. No one is forcing you to take the job. That’s why it’s an offer. You don’t have to take it. If you find something better, go with the better route. If you have to put in some extra work to get there, do it. Demanding something better without any extra work isn’t going to get you anywhere.
“minimum wage is supposed to be really low skill jobs, things that high schoolers can do to make some extra cash while they’re in school.”
this isn’t true, minimum wage is supposed to be a safety net to ensure the average person has enough to survive, they’re more important in countries without strong labour presence. Sweden doesn’t have a minimum wage, but has a similar concept called a collective agreement (it has a specific swedish name i forget i’m not swedish myself) which is generally ideal, that has it’s own problems and benefits that would take too long to write about
“If we increase that to $15/hour, but slash the hours in half”
this isn’t gonna happen lol, a federal minimum of $15 immediately would be catastrophic for lower cost of living states like Missouri or smth, but that’s why you implement it gradually as was planned (i think), hours may be reduced but it’s not gonna be as severe as half, companies still need workers to work
“the things you buy cost more”
yeah, a little more, definitely not that much though, i’m trying to be as untechnical as possible just because it’s easy to pile on technical terms on econ discussions, but prices of things can fluctuate with wages, some heavily some not
“On another note, those who are already at or above that new minimum wage? Yeah, chances are, their pay won’t be going up either.”
this is probably up to the person working the job, if they’re unhappy with their job they can always apply elsewhere while working, ask for higher wages as you have more responsibility, etc, everyone should be taught how to bargain with an employer, (dealing with those feelings aspect up to the person not the fact their wages are still the same, but you agree with this as you say later demanding something better without any extra work isn’t going to get you anywhere), it’s unlikely this would even be the case though if the role is as valued as it is in the hypothetical
“This isn’t to say higher pay is a bad thing, but it shouldn’t be forced.”
like most things in life, it depends, some people get fucked in high cost of living states like california that have atrocious policies like prop 13, and with containing such a huge population it’s probably more important to have quicker solutions that affect more people in a positive way than ones that might be better long term, but have no immediate impact. Wage increases, generally, are one of these solutions (an example of long term change would be a restructuring of how credit works so that things people are already doing, so long as they’re reliable, count towards building positive credit)
can post sources but this already took like 10 mins to type and it’d take a while, if anybody wants any i’ll post later, into econ stuff and will be doing it for a bsc/ba and probably beyond soon
Since we’re touching on this, like I said, $7.25 is the federal minimum wage. Different states have varying minimum wages, and some jobs (like agriculture) are completely exempt from this rule. Other jobs, like food service, can be lower if the employee is expected to at minimum make up the difference with tips. With this exception, if the employee has not made up the difference, then if the employer feels they haven’t put in the work to subsidize the difference, they don’t have to pay the difference.
If you wanna tell me that you honestly believe that Hawaii, who BY FUCKING FAR has the highest cost of living, since we are accepting the whole
For one, it was a fucking example, dip shit. For two, no shit, ya dum fuck! I know stores that have hiked their wages, are fighting to get anyone to even interview, and their biggest fucking reason? “Why take a management level position with benefits and guaranteed hours over McDonald’s next door with a higher wage in a starting position?” How the fuck do I know? Cause I kept having to drive to the DG out in fucking Fredericksburg to help cause they couldn’t get anyone to come in to interview!!! So they literally had a store manager, and whoever he could beg to come help.
Depends on the place. Your big box stores that have a shit ton of products they can spread the cost amongst and call it “inflation”, sure. On the small business side (of which the exact number of firms seems to vary depending on exact source, but all agree it’s 99.9% of all firms) can’t fucking do that. What does this mean for the Wal-Marts, Amazon, Target, etc who don’t want the extra competition? It goes away. The difference in price becomes too big, so you go where you can get the same, or comparable, product cheaper. https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/small-business/small-business-dashboard/economic-activity
And every employer is happy to tell them to fuck off, particularly when there are fewer of them, cause we’ve killed off all the small business.
And there is a big problem. We aren’t. The school system in the US is broken. It doesn’t care about real world skills anymore. Home economics is practically dead, shop is slowly on its way out the door… They care about the core curriculum and feels now. Hell, what sex Ed is now is a monstrosity. A middle schooler should not be getting taught about bondage and sado-massicism.
Except while people are leaving in mass, they are bringing the political bullshit with them that made the state they’re moving away from somewhere they wanted to leave.
How would increasing the minimum wage affect employment? Raising the minimum wage would increase the cost of employing low-wage workers. As a result, some employers would employ fewer workers than they would have under a lower minimum wage. However, for certain workers or in certain circumstances, employment could increase.
Changes in employment would be seen in the number of jobless, not just unemployed, workers. Jobless workers include those who have dropped out of the labor force (for example, because they believe no jobs are available for them) as well as those who are searching for work.
“If you wanna tell me that you honestly believe that Hawaii, who BY FUCKING FAR has the highest cost of living”
yeah tourist destinations tend to have absurdly high costs of living, it’s a huge problem, gentrification sucks and it’s been happening to hawaii for years, idk if you’re asking me if i believe it has the highest cost of living or not. I explicitly said minimum wage is SUPPOSED to be to ensure the average family has enough money, it often isn’t, idk how pointing to an outlier that is the way it is because of tourism is supposed to change my view on that
“For one, it was a fucking example, dip shit. For two, no shit, ya dum fuck!”
i know it was an example i literally said it was in my post lol? why are you so upset i said nothing that was inflammatory
“Why take a management level position with benefits and guaranteed hours over McDonald’s next door with a higher wage in a starting position?”
for lots of reasons, the management job will probably less physically demanding, the benefits might outweigh the extra costs idk what the specific benefits would be, health insurance might be better, but i get it’s a rhetorical question, the rest of the paragraph seems like an anecdote which i’m not too interested in unless it’s another part of this hypothetical
“Your big box stores that have a shit ton of products they can spread the cost amongst and call it “inflation”, sure. "
most people shop at big businesses, it’s where most people do their grocery shopping, even in the graphs you provide most people work for bigger businesses, granted it’s not a huge difference and smaller businesses should still be catered for, but monolithic companies aren’t competing with smaller businesses already, convenience is what’s keeping smaller businesses alive (that and specialisation but it’s irrelevant to the conversation, there isn’t much more for newer businesses to specialise in outside of tech which generally has a higher barrier of entry than most industries, and these companies will typically have to work with bigger companies anyway)
“99.9% of all firms”
it might be 99.9% of all firms, but it’s not 99.9% of business, it’s gonna be a minority
" who don’t want the extra competition?”
big businesses compete with big businesses, competition isn’t coming from small businesses, a small breakfast place has NOTHING on a franchise, when you buy a phone you’re not going for a small business model hand crafted that cost 8 grand you’re choosing between android and ios, we’re already in a world where small business is obsolete outside of speciality services and convenience
“And every employer is happy to tell them to fuck off, particularly when there are fewer of them, cause we’ve killed off all the small business.”
earlier you were talking about having a labour shortage with a management position because mcdonalds is offering similar wages, but in this example you’re pretending an employer won’t pay for needed labour? you can’t have both when it suits you, either there’s a labour shortage or there isn’t
“And there is a big problem. We aren’t. The school system in the US is broken”
yeah, it has been for decades, it hasn’t caught up with the advancements of technology, i agree, personally i’ve been so much more productive getting a degree from home on my computer than having to commute an hour just to listen to the exact same lecture that could have been given over zoom, and i’d imagine a lot of higher education would be more beneficial if it utilised this kind of learning, the people that want to learn will learn regardless
“what sex Ed is now is a monstrosity. A middle schooler should not be getting taught about bondage and sado-massicism.”
this is just, kinda weird, nobody was talking about this lol, it also just isn’t happening on any meaningful scale
PragerU is notorious for it’s bad econ takes and misinformation, you can just google this, it’s not even a real university it just has university in the name lmao
“Except while people are leaving in mass, they are bringing the political bullshit with them that made the state they’re moving away from somewhere they wanted to leave.”
the examples they provide in the video you linked are pretty odd, elon musk’s projects in texas, so moving to texas would make sense, there’s probably not much related to that, there’s also the false equivalency of single cities in a state becoming the state, austin, texas, isn’t texas, it’s austin texas, and austin texas is what’s getting popular, not the entirety of texas
" [How Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Could Affect Employment and Family Income | Congressional Budget Office]
COULD, we already have empirical studies on the impacts of increasing wages and price changes but i’ll still entertain it https://prnt.sc/1sw2g8l
personally, i think having more people out of poverty than in is good idk about you https://prnt.sc/1sw3ww2
again, the majority of people are in the 2.0-2.99 and below, your data is sorta just supporting it’d benefit most people, family income WOULD fall for those that are already rich, yes, that’s the minority of people and i care about the majority, which the data suggests would benefit, i’m surprised there isn’t interquartile ranges on these data sets but i’d guess there are in the CVS links underneath, wealth inequality sucks and it skews the fuck out of data sets like these as demonstrated
" The Bottom Line
Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is a policy goal for many lawmakers. Increasing the minimum wage is expected to lift individuals out of poverty and improve work ethic, however, it also comes with many possible negative implications, such as inflation and a loss of jobs."
-investopedia
it WILL benefit people, but COULD harm people, i’ll take the guarantee of it being good vs the potentiality of harm
this is an opinion piece from someone who has no degrees so i’m not exactly sure why i should care ab this, my bad it does cite a source but it’s also cited in the cbo source you posted, so i read it, writers should make source hyperlinks clearer instead of the same/similarly coloured text
Show me exactly where it says it “will” benifit people
There is a track record of increasing minimum wage doing this
Show me the guarantee
Well, what is your degree? And quite frankly, when fundamentals are crossed, or shit gets fucked, you don’t need to be a degree or licence to tell when someone messed up. Like a comedian I enjoy says in one of his bits, “I’ve never flown a helicopter. If I saw one in a tree, I could still be like, ‘Dude fucked up. It’s not supposed to be up there’”
For one… Learn how to use quote. Please. It’s not hard. It’s not rocket science. Figure it out. Second, it’s not an outlier. While there is a LARGE gap between it and California… $15/hour is still not enough for NYC. And New York is even further down from Cali. https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061
Did you now?
Could have fooled me!
That’s a downside?
Extra costs? And again, benifits vs no benifits. Guranteed hours, medical, dental, 401k, optical, ect.
Clearly.
… Seriously?
Just barely over half. 52% large businesses. 48% small. ABOUT HALF OF THE US IS EMPLOYED BY SMALL BUSINESSES. And we want to go down the path of killing them off and hurting the chances of others being successful or being created.
Prove it.
Ever heard of the restaurant industry? Or do you think it’s all just chains? Should we just eat at McDonalds and Ruby Tuesday?
Again, prove it
Then how do they survive?
That quite literally doesn’t exist.
Bullshit
Read it again. I said higher.
In this example, the other buisness has been killed off, drastically increasing unemployment and job competition, thanks to a reduced number of jobs.
Here’s the problem: in the US right now? There’s kinda BOTH.
Then you clearly know nothing about them, have no interest in educating yourself, and have no clue of what you’re talking about.
Yes, it’s fucking weird. It’s sick. Education was brought up. And people don’t talk about it cause, as what’s been brought up, and has been pointed out, teachers don’t want what they talk about to their students getting out.
How so?
As a business decision? Yeah. It’s cheaper by alot and has a lot less restrictions.
… Please, re-read that Mr. Online Collage Grad (or did I misgender you?) and check your grammer.
Think again. I’m out in the hill country and couldn’t fucking tell you how much more our population has grown in the last 5 years or so, just from people moving here.
Oh. My. Gawd. Is that a bar-line graph with no source or matching article from a screen capture?!?
Ugh, I think I’m gonna change my political stance from Unaffiliated to Democrat if you keep this up!
Elaborate.
“TAX THE RICH!”
Cause, you know… The data is always right, and should never be taken with any degree of skepticism or even a grain of salt.
Really showing those quoting skills you learned in Online Collage!
Alright, Alright, that’ll be the last one from me. Can’t control anything he does, but if he wants to squirm to think he’s got the last word, then let him be wrong.
didn’t think it would actually happen, I bailed after I had to scroll multiple times per reply, nuke the thread if you want. It ended up with me explaining what I think about it like I know everything (as if I even looked up anything before, although at least some of my points are valid) and almost no conversation beyond 1 reply anyways lol. As always, there will be bias (often blind or unchanging) and the answer is “it depends on the situation, 1 size does not fit all when it comes to employment”. RIP thread
just gonna reply with this, you shat on me twice for going to an actual college, but having to do it online due to covid (like why lol??), then proceeded to misspell college several times indicating you don’t know how to spell college, same with benefit, please stop being so inflammatory to people on a forum who haven’t done the same for you it’s childish, told ohmboy before you replied i wasn’t gonna carry it on so
