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$9/h minimum wage

The_Animus said:
Perhaps they do provide $9/hr of value but they are only compensated 7.25 and someone higher up in the company gets that other 1.75
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DrDave said:
If I can get people to deliver $9 of value for $7.25 then I deserve at least part of that $1.75.
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Just realised, the person who found me my contract gets £50 per hour just for finding me this position. That's the market value of getting me into this position, my client are happy to pay it, and its worth it to me to work here despite losing out on this money. Same deal.
 
IMST said:
s d-a-l: you said "Of course, if we didn't have welfare, alot of those people would decide that it was time for them to get to work and the productivity of the country would increase."
This implies that they choose not to work now. I'm not sure why you feel it's a derail to point that out.
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Ok, point taken. I think there are people who are collecting welfare who would rather not work. Same goes for unemployment.
 
As much as I love the idea of increasing the minimum, I'm not convinced that this really will help.

I imagine many businesses will just jettison a position or two to make up the payroll difference. Now we have a higher min wage, but less jobs.

Or, employers simply cut back hours. No more 40 hours, you get 35 max. Less time at work, sure, but you're still in the same wage boat.

Plus, with the new ACA coming up, some employers are already cutting back full time hours so they don't have to offer employees health care. Which means the ACA is going to get loaded. Which means more tax dollars to cover that cost.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see more people working and living comfortably through their wages...but I got a bad feeling about this.
 
X said:
Minimum wage here (Manitoba) is $10/hour. Goes up every year or two, too.
I was talking to a cousin in the U.S., and was shocked to learn that he made $5/hour. That's not enough to live on. Sure, stuff is cheaper South of the border, but not that much cheaper.

At $9/hour, you might see corporation whining about profits, but not much. After all, they manage just fine here in Canada.
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You'd have to pay most people much more then that to live in Manitoba.
 
While I'm sure there must be a Laffer Curve principle involved, where is the evidence here that raising the minimum wage results in less jobs. Every study I've seen says that simply isn't true.

Research Papers on The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Jobs - The job loss myth

Employment and the Minimum Wage—Evidence from Recent State Labor Market Trends
That argument, however, rests on the simplistic observation that some of the states with high minimum wages also have high unemployment rates. Without more examination, this observation is as useful in understanding state job markets as noting that joblessness has been on the rise in New York since the last time the Yankees won the World Series. It might be true, but it doesn’t mean one is causing the other.

The argument that state minimum wages have had a substantially negative effect on a state’s labor market is an extreme repackaging of the perennial claim that minimum wages do more harm than good because they cause many low-wage workers to lose their jobs. While this argument was once more prevalent among economists, recent studies with improved methodologies have reached the opposite conclusion.
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The impact of a $9 minimum wage
But employer groups say that raising the federal minimum wage would cost jobs, and hiking state rates doesn't help reduce poverty.
Studies have projected a loss of at least 467,500 positions were the hourly rate to go up to $9.80, according to the Employment Policies Institute, which advocates for employers. The most recent boost meant that 114,000 fewer teens had jobs.
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A projected loss is an assertion. We have plenty of real examples that studies can be done on.

I'd love to see the counter evidence, not the GOP assertions like those in the CNNMoney article.
 
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daenku32 said:
The President proposed it in his State of the Union.

Didn't watch it but it sounds good to me. Helps low income workers afford things much better.
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Employers won't hire a person for a low skill job for $9:00 an hour. It will lead to unemployment of unskilled workers even worse than it is now. Sometimes a low paying job leads to better jobs and the higher starting salary will keep that from happening.
 
Why not just make it $50/hr and then everyone will be comfortably mid-upper middle class?
 
StankApe said:
I have literally never even seen a full service gas station since I have been driving (23 years) I assume some still exist, but they are wayyy in the minority
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I think there's 2 states (New Jersey and maybe Oregon?) that require an attendant pump your gas, because apparently people in those states are too stupid to pump their own without blowing the place up or something.
 
X said:
Minimum wage here (Manitoba) is $10/hour. Goes up every year or two, too.
I was talking to a cousin in the U.S., and was shocked to learn that he made $5/hour.
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Current minimum is $7.25/hr.

Is your cousin an illlegal alien or something?
 
fitzgibbon said:
I think what surprises me most about this thread is the presumption that everyone can work these higher-value careers (whatever they might be). Let's be honest; not everyone's cut out in that regard and then the underlying question that follows it up is what then do we do with those unfortunates?

Is empathy and 'there but for the Grace of God go I' entirely passee in this age of efficiency fixation?

Fitz
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I do have empathy and believe in social safety nets, but the minimum wage is smoke and mirrors. Makes everyone feel good but doesn't actually do anything.

You can mandate minimum wages, but you can't mandate value to those wages. See Australia, for example. High minimum wage, but everything is much more expensive. At the end of the day it's a wash. Good for nothing but internet bragging rights.
 
Sabretooth said:
As much as I love the idea of increasing the minimum, I'm not convinced that this really will help.

I imagine many businesses will just jettison a position or two to make up the payroll difference. Now we have a higher min wage, but less jobs.

Or, employers simply cut back hours. No more 40 hours, you get 35 max. Less time at work, sure, but you're still in the same wage boat.

Plus, with the new ACA coming up, some employers are already cutting back full time hours so they don't have to offer employees health care. Which means the ACA is going to get loaded. Which means more tax dollars to cover that cost.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see more people working and living comfortably through their wages...but I got a bad feeling about this.
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Nah, most likely the cost of living will just increase until the new minimum wage buys no more than the old minimum wage.

And it's also dependent on geography. A McDonald's downstate might pay minimum wage, but cost of living is much lower there. Here in Chicago they have to pay well above minimum wage to attract good workers. Over $10/hr IIRC.

Urban areas will therefore be hardly affected at all by increasing minimum wage, it's low cost of living rural areas that are most affected.
 
daenku32 said:
The President proposed it in his State of the Union.

Didn't watch it but it sounds good to me. Helps low income workers afford things much better.
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I'm not so sure this would be a good move. With U.S. production not exactly on the incline, how this may impact both existing and available jobs could be detrimental to the overall employment rate. Budget layoffs, spurred by increased employment premiums, could mean future jobs will be on the decline. To me, it would be better to have more people employed at lets say $8.00 an hour, than to have to support a larger number in the unemployment line.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Employers won't hire a person for a low skill job for $9:00 an hour. It will lead to unemployment of unskilled workers even worse than it is now. Sometimes a low paying job leads to better jobs and the higher starting salary will keep that from happening.
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Why wouldn't an employer pay $9/hr? It's a matter of whether or not the employee's labor is desired, not what the cost per skill level is.

Where the evidence on this job loss myth?
 
michael44 said:
I'm not so sure this would be a good move. With U.S. production not exactly on the incline, how this may impact both existing and available jobs could be detrimental to the overall employment rate. Budget layoffs, spurred by increased employment premiums, could mean future jobs will be on the decline. To me, it would be better to have more people employed at lets say $8.00 an hour, than to have to support a larger number in the unemployment line.
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If you're making a product you want to sell in the US it costs a lot to ship it here from Asia. And a lot of low wage jobs are service jobs, not exportable.
 
Teh Ohole's nefarious purpose in raising the minimum wage is in boosting union wages which are (bizarrely, in any rational universe) tied to a multiple of (or a level over) the minimum wage.

"Follow the money" works every time it is tried.
 
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