Is my minimum wage logic correct?

[Phoenix86]

Nice try.

http://www.indeed.com/salary/Machinist.html
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=welder&l1=
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=warehouse&l1=
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=assembly&l1=

Lower end is about ~$10/hour and that's for a parts picker. Assembly line style put part a into part b is about the same. Anything higher skilled than that is making ~$15/hour.

edit: what you fail to note is, those people won't work for $10/hour if minimum wage goes up.

Overall your logic is far too simplistic.

 

[dank69]

For larger companies it's typically 30-50% of costs, depending on how you want to define payroll, and what sort of business the company is in. For service organizations it can easily be the largest line item.

Right but, what percentage of that is min wage labor? Probably high for service again, but then you aren't concerned about exports.

 

[Phoenix86]

Except that the businesses most affected by a minimum wage increase are small businesses that can least afford the add'l overhead.

It sounds good on paper and makes sense but it doesn't seem to hold water.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/15/minimum-wage-jobs_n_5330852.html

Data seems valid, but I only glanced at it yesterday.

 

[Phoenix86]

Right but, what percentage of that is min wage labor? Probably high for service again, but then you aren't concerned about exports.

You can't look at min. wage only. Jobs near min. wage will also go up.

Someone working for min. wage +$1 today won't be happy if minimum wage goes up $2 and they are making min. wage again. They will want min. wage +$1, or close. Scaling down as you go up in salary (IE someone making $100K won't ask for a raise because min. wage went up).

 

[BurnItDwn]

The biggest impact to an increase in minimum wage is that prices at fast food places and cheap take out places will go up significantly. Everywhere else, costs will be much less impacted.

 

[dank69]

The biggest impact to an increase in minimum wage is that prices at fast food places and cheap take out places will go up significantly. Everywhere else, costs will be much less impacted.

Yup, like how McDonald's changed the dollar menu to the dollar and more menu, which normal people just call "the menu."

 

[phreaqe]

The problem is minimum wage jobs are supposed to be starter jobs, not career jobs. When you decide to stay an a minimum wage job your whole life, you start acting like it's the employers fault you don't make enough to live on.

Raising the minimum wage is a backwards fix.

Yah, that is one of the problems i have with all the talk of raising the min wage. Especially when i see the burger flippers and mcdonalds going on strike wanting 15 bucks an hour.

Lets say i make 25 per hour doing skilled IT work. When they get 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers my labor which required schooling and is not something you could walk off the street and do has become significantly less valuable even though my labor should be worth way more then the person flipping burgers.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Yah, that is one of the problems i have with all the talk of raising the min wage. Especially when i see the burger flippers and mcdonalds going on strike wanting 15 bucks an hour.

Lets say i make 25 per hour doing skilled IT work. When they get 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers my labor which required schooling and is not something you could walk off the street and do has become significantly less valuable even though my labor should be worth way more then the person flipping burgers.

So what you're saying is your just a vain selfish asshole?

With how things have been going over the past 20-30 years, it's not as simple as just "starting" out and pushing further. A lot of people get stuck despite training and schooling in underpaying underskilled jobs not to mention people stuck in those jobs because they're underpaid and underskilled. As my father now says, hardwork isn't enough in this country anymore (he thinks he'd be a bum if he grew up now).

 

[Oyeve]

So what you're saying is your just a vain selfish asshole?

Hes not a vain selfish asshole, I feel the same. Yeah I make 45+ an hour but thats after 20+ years in my field. When I started real work I made $3.35 an hour and I busted my ass. I was a cashier in the early 80s and even that job was much harder then than it was today. We didnt have price scanners, auto tax indicators. We entered prices manually and actually had to know which products were taxable and which werent and work accordingly. now these cashiers just have to swipe the product on the scanner and the computer does all the guess work. Mcdonalds workers literally push a picture button on the register and insto-presto it works. And they want $15 bucks an hour. Sorry, no. If the workers were actually mostly pleasant, maybe, but 95% of them are assholes who treat you like shit and god forbid you ask for a big mac without something or say the cost it $5.15 and I give a 5 and a quarter then I look at them trying to figure out the exact change. Its a joke and they dont deserve even more money. Hell, most fast food places should even be getting paid the minimum.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Higher labor costs => less billionaires, more millionaires => cost of goods not changed

Listen, costs will come out of the consumers to some extent but to some extent the outrageous incomes at the top will start to fall. Just today, the compensation at Chipotle got shot down by shareholders. This needs to happen more often!

 

[JM Aggie08]

Minimum wage employees get paid as such because they perform unskilled, minimum wage work. Even at 16-17 I understood that.

 

[Phoenix86]

Higher labor costs => less billionaires, more millionaires => cost of goods not changed

Listen, costs will come out of the consumers to some extent but to some extent the outrageous incomes at the top will start to fall. Just today, the compensation at Chipotle got shot down by shareholders. This needs to happen more often!

Exactly, as much as people bitch about the concept of redistributing wealth, the entire point of raising minimum wage is to take more $ from the top and push it down to the middle/low end.

Look, I don't like the idea of the government getting into things like this but it's seriously out of control. The elephant in the room is exec. pay. The top end is getting significantly higher compensation than they did 20 or 30 years ago. You can't realistically set a maximum wage, but since we already have a minimum wage knob I think it's the best one to turn.

 

[DrPizza]

You can't look at min. wage only. Jobs near min. wage will also go up.

Someone working for min. wage +$1 today won't be happy if minimum wage goes up $2 and they are making min. wage again. They will want min. wage +$1, or close. Scaling down as you go up in salary (IE someone making $100K won't ask for a raise because min. wage went up).

I just had a thought -- don't have time to flesh it out much though.

Let's add $1/hour to everyone's wage. The people at the bottom are going to be thrilled. The people at the top are going to be "I don't give a shit. I make $20,000 per hour."

What the people at the top want is "hey, minimum wage is about $7. Let's give everyone a 14% raise. Then, their wages DO make a difference at the top."

So, which way is fair - a percent increase to everyone? Or a percent increase?

 

[Phoenix86]

Minimum wage employees get paid as such because they perform unskilled, minimum wage work. Even at 16-17 I understood that.

Which is a fine and dandy concept but you don't address the ratio of minimum wage to cost of living.

Do you want to have the low end earning enough to make a living, or do you want to bridge the gap between minimum living standards through welfare type programs?

You have to pick one of the two, there's no magical world where "oh you fail at life, but I'm not paying for it" exists. Someone picks up the tab and it's usually a much larger tab when someone else pays (welfare) vs. the person paying their own tab (earning enough to do so).

 

[Phoenix86]

I just had a thought -- don't have time to flesh it out much though.

Let's add $1/hour to everyone's wage. The people at the bottom are going to be thrilled. The people at the top are going to be "I don't give a shit. I make $20,000 per hour."

What the people at the top want is "hey, minimum wage is about $7. Let's give everyone a 14% raise. Then, their wages DO make a difference at the top."

So, which way is fair - a percent increase to everyone? Or a percent increase?

Where does that $1/hour/person come from? This strategy will just cause inflation, no?

Ideally I think something like this has to happen.

Min wage. +$5
Low skill. +$3
Average skill. +$1
High skill. -$1
Top end/C-level -$5

Ignore the exact numbers and look at the scale. If anything I guess it should be %. You will get some inflation, bring the bottom end up, raise the middle a little, bring the top end down quite a bit.

There's a number of mechanics that can make this happen, taxes for example but to me that feeds the welfare model. Keep the poor, poor and increase the government through increased taxes to keep the poor above the poverty line. Fuck that.

I'd rather see the money routed through people not the government, which means you have adjust pay.

 

[slag]

Hes not a vain selfish asshole, I feel the same. Yeah I make 45+ an hour but thats after 20+ years in my field. When I started real work I made $3.35 an hour and I busted my ass. I was a cashier in the early 80s and even that job was much harder then than it was today. We didnt have price scanners, auto tax indicators. We entered prices manually and actually had to know which products were taxable and which werent and work accordingly. now these cashiers just have to swipe the product on the scanner and the computer does all the guess work. Mcdonalds workers literally push a picture button on the register and insto-presto it works. And they want $15 bucks an hour. Sorry, no. If the workers were actually mostly pleasant, maybe, but 95% of them are assholes who treat you like shit and god forbid you ask for a big mac without something or say the cost it $5.15 and I give a 5 and a quarter then I look at them trying to figure out the exact change. Its a joke and they dont deserve even more money. Hell, most fast food places should even be getting paid the minimum.

Truth!!!
Show me why fast food workers are worth the $15.00/hour and I'll consider supporting it. Otherwise, these button pushers don't do anything a monkey couldn't do.

 

[slag]

Which is a fine and dandy concept but you don't address the ratio of minimum wage to cost of living.

Do you want to have the low end earning enough to make a living, or do you want to bridge the gap between minimum living standards through welfare type programs?

You have to pick one of the two, there's no magical world where "oh you fail at life, but I'm not paying for it" exists. Someone picks up the tab and it's usually a much larger tab when someone else pays (welfare) vs. the person paying their own tab (earning enough to do so).

Dumb people, you know, the ones who make minimum wage, don't understand ratios. They understand the word "raise", therefore, I don't think your argument pertains to them.

:sneaky:

 

[Phoenix86]

Dumb people, you know, the ones who make minimum wage, don't understand ratios. They understand the word "raise", therefore, I don't think your argument pertains to them.

:sneaky:

Yeah, but they don't really need to understand them either which is nice because I don't think I could teach them with the new math. 😉

Also, I suspect many of us made minimum wage at one point.

 

[ultimatebob]

Something tells me that most of the people asking for a $15 minimum wage do not understand the Economics behind it.

If they did, they would realize that there is a good chance that they'll lose their job and see their grocery bills go up 20% practically overnight.

 

[Meghan54]

Something tells me that most of the people asking for a $15 minimum wage do not understand the Economics behind it.

If they did, they would realize that there is a good chance that they'll lose their job and see their grocery bills go up 20% practically overnight.

Maybe if the min. wage jumped immediately to $15/hr, but that's not what's being proposed, is it?

Honestly, if the min. wage increases had kept pace with productivity and inflation in this country since 1968, it'd be at a tad over $16/hr....and give the same buying power as min. wage gave in 1968.

But instead the min. wage has languished since '68, causing diminished buying power for the unfortunate at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Remember, not everyone can or should go to college to be an IT specialist, MD, engineer, etc. Who'd work manufacturing, dig/pave roads, serve you lunch, clean offices at night?

And as for massive unemployment and massive price increases....didn't happen before when min. wage was increased, so why would it now? In fact, while there probably would be some unemployment increases, there'd probably be more employment from increased economic activity from the increased spending the lowest economic rungs would pump into the economy.

And it'd also remove many from having to supplement with various welfare programs.

 

[phreaqe]

So what you're saying is your just a vain selfish asshole?

With how things have been going over the past 20-30 years, it's not as simple as just "starting" out and pushing further. A lot of people get stuck despite training and schooling in underpaying underskilled jobs not to mention people stuck in those jobs because they're underpaid and underskilled. As my father now says, hardwork isn't enough in this country anymore (he thinks he'd be a bum if he grew up now).

It has nothing to do with vanity or selfishness but thanks for that. Its a fact that skilled labor is worth more then unskilled labor. I don't think someone flipper burgers at mcdonalds deserves to make 15 bucks an hour. My Wife is a nurse. She had to work her rear end off in school and deals with things i could not even come close to handling. Starting nurses in this area make something like 23-24 bucks an hour which i think is very low for the amount of crappy work they have to do. Why should someone flipping burgers get even close to that? Are the nurses going to get raises to compensate for a raise in minimum wage?

 

[pete6032]

Which is a fine and dandy concept but you don't address the ratio of minimum wage to cost of living.

Do you want to have the low end earning enough to make a living, or do you want to bridge the gap between minimum living standards through welfare type programs?

You have to pick one of the two, there's no magical world where "oh you fail at life, but I'm not paying for it" exists. Someone picks up the tab and it's usually a much larger tab when someone else pays (welfare) vs. the person paying their own tab (earning enough to do so).

Thank you for being the voice of reason in this thread.

 

[ultimatebob]

It has nothing to do with vanity or selfishness but thanks for that. Its a fact that skilled labor is worth more then unskilled labor. I don't think someone flipper burgers at mcdonalds deserves to make 15 bucks an hour. My Wife is a nurse. She had to work her rear end off in school and deals with things i could not even come close to handling. Starting nurses in this area make something like 23-24 bucks an hour which i think is very low for the amount of crappy work they have to do. Why should someone flipping burgers get even close to that? Are the nurses going to get raises to compensate for a raise in minimum wage?

Almost everyone eventually gets a raise when the minimum wage goes up. They basically have to, as the costs of things like fast food and groceries go up in price to pay for the new wage increases.

Seriously, do these $15 an hour protesters just think that the big corporations like Safeway and Jack In The Box are just going to accept a cut in their profit margins? No, they pass those cost increases over to the consumer.

 

[phreaqe]

Thank you for being the voice of reason in this thread.

It would be a voice of reason except its missing a key point. Should every job out there be one capable or fully supporting someone? I don't think it should. There are some jobs where it just will not not be enough to live off by itself and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[Phoenix86]

Almost everyone eventually gets a raise when the minimum wage goes up. They basically have to, as the costs of things like fast food and groceries go up in price to pay for the new wage increases.

Seriously, do these $15 an hour protesters just think that the big corporations like Safeway and Jack In The Box are just going to accept a cut in their profit margins? No, they pass those cost increases over to the consumer.

They just write it off!

In all seriousness, some of the costs would obviously be passed on to consumers but not 100%. The rest of the costs would be absorbed by the company, and there's only one place to take it from. Top end earners.

If there really is a shift society away from reducing low income people's ability to earn then businesses would be stupid to pass 100% of the costs down. It would just put things back to square one, forcing another increase.