Should the Federal Government Be Telling Companies What They Have To Pay Employees?

[Vic]

If your business can't survive $15 minimum wage then your business does not deserve to survive. Period.

Well, it's a straw man, if not a blatant lie, to say that BillyBob's business wouldn't be able to survive solely because of a $15/hr min wage when all of his competitors would also have to pay the same wage.
The real impact here isn't the wage increase itself, because that affects all businesses equally, but that some businesses may be better prepared financially to temporarily hold off their price increases and thereby gain some market share.

 

[IronWing]

The federal minimum wage needs to be raised and indexed to inflation. State and federal maximum compensation for corporate officers would be most excellent as well. Corporations are creations of the state and I see no reason the chartering states/feds cannot set maximums. 50 x minimum wage should be enough for anyone. You can bet the pitiful cries from the richest people in society over minimum wage hikes would calm down a bit.

 

[1prophet]

I suggest you read up on the working conditions and pay of the industrial revolution to see what it would be like.

Something like this,

Revealed: Disney's £35 Ariel doll earns a Chinese worker 1p

Undercover investigation exposes illegally long working hours and low wages for staff at factory producing toys for Disney

www.theguardian.com

China’s Forced Labor Problem

Forced labor in China receives remarkably little attention despite decades as the world’s factory floor.

thediplomat.com

From Apple to Adidas: Brands Use Ethnic Minority Slave Labor in China

Between 2017 and 2019, more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred to work in 27 manufacturing facilities that supply 83 global brands

medium.com

As long as it isn't in their backyard and woke companies like Disney are doing it, it must be OK

Americans have been brainwashed to look the other way when buying cheap outsourced goods, yet cry out about the injustice of burger flippers not making $15.00 an hour along with all the other entitled benefits.

How about the American government apply some of that extraterritoriality that they have no problem when it comes to corporate interests to all products made regardless of location and prosecute the executives in charge who profit off of them by using outsourcing to bypass such things as federal minimum wage laws.

 

[Leymenaide]

Since the 80's we have re-monopolised our economy. A few have to much power and it needs to be reduced. I for one am tired of paying Walmarts employee's. If you work a full time job you should not need social benefits from the state. It is just more corporate welfare.They make billions their employees should be able to feed themselves and have a roof over their head. Workers have no organisational rights there is no level playing field for the average worker the least society can do is guaranteed a minimum wage.

 

[IronWing]

Something like this,

...

As long as it isn't in their backyard and woke companies like Disney are doing it, it must be OK

Americans have been brainwashed to look the other way when buying cheap outsourced goods, yet cry out about the injustice of burger flippers not making $15.00 an hour along with all the other entitled benefits.

How about the American government apply some of that extraterritoriality that they have no problem when it comes to corporate interests to all products made regardless of location and prosecute the executives in charge who profit off of them by using outsourcing to bypass such things as federal minimum wage laws.

I know that when I have an idea that I'd like to see implemented, I like to start out by attacking people most likely to agree with my idea.

 

[ivwshane]

So, Billy Joe Bob's grass cuttin' service that operates only in Bugtussle Lousiana should have to pay Cooter and Skeeter a Federal Minimum Wage to ride around on a lawn mower?

Lol I love these what if scenarios because in every case it shows your contempt for people you think aren’t good enough to be paid well.

 

[ivwshane]

Something like this,

Revealed: Disney's £35 Ariel doll earns a Chinese worker 1p

Undercover investigation exposes illegally long working hours and low wages for staff at factory producing toys for Disney

www.theguardian.com

China’s Forced Labor Problem

Forced labor in China receives remarkably little attention despite decades as the world’s factory floor.

thediplomat.com

From Apple to Adidas: Brands Use Ethnic Minority Slave Labor in China

Between 2017 and 2019, more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred to work in 27 manufacturing facilities that supply 83 global brands

medium.com

As long as it isn't in their backyard and woke companies like Disney are doing it, it must be OK

Americans have been brainwashed to look the other way when buying cheap outsourced goods, yet cry out about the injustice of burger flippers not making $15.00 an hour along with all the other entitled benefits.

How about the American government apply some of that extraterritoriality that they have no problem when it comes to corporate interests to all products made regardless of location and prosecute the executives in charge who profit off of them by using outsourcing to bypass such things as federal minimum wage laws.

How many trade agreements have you supported that had minimum wage requirements and/or minimum standards for working conditions? I bet I know the answer.

 

[desy]

Lol I love these what if scenarios because in every case it shows your contempt for people you think aren’t good enough to be paid well.

Yeah why should people deserve a living wage when they work hard?

 

[ivwshane]

Yeah why should people deserve a living wage when they work hard?

It’s not even about working hard. Working, period, should be enough to earn a living wage.

If I’m an American (or human) why would I not want my fellow Americans (humans) to be better off? Think about your life and how improving your financial situation helped you. Now tell me how having a whole country (planet) with people who are closer to financial stability wouldn’t be good for everyone.

 

[rstrohkirch]

As a business owner with 150 employees and ~70% of them at state minimum wage or within 10% of it, I wouldn't even care. What do you guys think is going to happen if you moved everything to $15.00/hr minimum? I and all of my competitors along with practically every industry that is affected by this change is going to raise their prices. Which is going to be a lot industries. So I'm going to make the exact same amount of money I was before and you are going to pay more for my product. Everyone else in my industry is going to do the exact same thing and these prices will become the new accepted normal. The one thing that it will do is drive my poorly run competitors out of business because the operating capitol that they need is going to be much greater now. So if anything I'm going to make more money.

Now the people who are going to really be hurt by this is everyone on a fixed income. As the pricing structure on everything swings sharply upgrade by a 15/hr minimum, these individuals and families have 0 means of increasing their income levels. Then we need the government to go back through again and adjust SS and various state benefits to help these people.

 

[desy]

As a business owner with 150 employees and ~70% of them at state minimum wage or within 10% of it, I wouldn't even care. What do you guys think is going to happen if you moved everything to $15.00/hr minimum? I and all of my competitors along with practically every industry that is affected by this change is going to raise their prices. Which is going to be a lot industries. So I'm going to make the exact same amount of money I was before and you are going to pay more for my product. Everyone else in my industry is going to do the exact same thing and these prices will become the new accepted normal. The one thing that it will do is drive my poorly run competitors out of business because the operating capitol that they need is going to be much greater now. So if anything I'm going to make more money.

Now the people who are going to really be hurt by this is everyone on a fixed income. As the pricing structure on everything swings sharply upgrade by a 15/hr minimum, these individuals and families have 0 means of increasing their income levels. Then we need the government to go back through again and adjust SS and various state benefits to help these people.

Yes its econ 101, classic wage price spiral however this is about homogenizing across geography a minimum, a lot of places the minimum still won't be enough. Other places need a kick to keep their citizens up to inflation and that's the lag that is worrisome and places where the poor get poorer.

 

[ivwshane]

As a business owner with 150 employees and ~70% of them at state minimum wage or within 10% of it, I wouldn't even care. What do you guys think is going to happen if you moved everything to $15.00/hr minimum? I and all of my competitors along with practically every industry that is affected by this change is going to raise their prices. Which is going to be a lot industries. So I'm going to make the exact same amount of money I was before and you are going to pay more for my product. Everyone else in my industry is going to do the exact same thing and these prices will become the new accepted normal. The one thing that it will do is drive my poorly run competitors out of business because the operating capitol that they need is going to be much greater now. So if anything I'm going to make more money.

Now the people who are going to really be hurt by this is everyone on a fixed income. As the pricing structure on everything swings sharply upgrade by a 15/hr minimum, these individuals and families have 0 means of increasing their income levels. Then we need the government to go back through again and adjust SS and various state benefits to help these people.

Yeah, I suggest you do some research on the subject or take an updated class on economics because price increases aren’t the only option. If what you were saying was true then we’d see spikes in inflation every time the minimum wage was raised.

 

[rstrohkirch]

Yeah, I suggest you do some research on the subject or take an updated class on economics because price increases aren’t the only option. If what you were saying was true then we’d see spikes in inflation every time the minimum wage was raised.

Hold on. You're telling me to go back to college because you feel my guess at the most likely result of this suggested change is wrong according to you? What direct experience do you even have on this subject? Do you have employees? Do you deal with mandatory minimum wage increases yearly and how it effects the pricing on the products you sell? Do you talk to fellow business owners to find out how they adjust in markets that either have have forced minimum wages or staffing shortages? I'm honestly curious, what do you do and what experience do have to comment on this subject. Because the research you personally suggest easily backs up my claims on how my industry handles things like a 15/hr minimum through example cities such as Seattle. And businesses that share the same labor pool that I do react to changes such as things in very similar ways.

I almost can't stop myself from laughing. I'm telling you I have 150 employees, which you could easily draw conclusions on either success or income from that and you're telling me to go back to school on a subject I literally deal with every day of my life. I need a better emoji for this than what this site provides.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

You know what's gonna happen when prices go up because people are making more money even at low end service jobs?

People on fixed incomes that can't work for whatever reason won't be able to buy basics.

 

[owensdj]

Raising the minimum wage isn't going to help those people in poverty because they're working for $7.25/hour. It's going to hurt them because businesses will use automation to replace their jobs. Better to have a job making $7.25 than no job at all.

 

[ivwshane]

Hold on. You're telling me to go back to college because you feel my guess at the most likely result of this suggested change is wrong according to you? What direct experience do you even have on this subject? Do you have employees? Do you deal with mandatory minimum wage increases yearly and how it effects the pricing on the products you sell? Do you talk to fellow business owners to find out how they adjust in markets that either have have forced minimum wages or staffing shortages? I'm honestly curious, what do you do and what experience do have to comment on this subject. Because the research you personally suggest easily backs up my claims on how my industry handles things like a 15/hr minimum through example cities such as Seattle. And businesses that share the same labor pool that I do react to changes such as things in very similar ways.

I almost can't stop myself from laughing. I'm telling you I have 150 employees, which you could easily draw conclusions on either success or income from that and you're telling me to go back to school on a subject I literally deal with every day of my life. I need a better emoji for this than what this site provides.

As expected. Nobody can tell you are wrong because you run a business which somehow makes you an expert on the subject.

Like I said, you should probably do some research on the subject, or continue sounding like an idiot. Feel free to look up the many threads here on the subject if you want but I suspect you won't because you aren't interested in the truth, you've got yours and fuck everyone else, right? I bet your attrition rate is pretty good too because you sound like a great boss. Lol

 

[MrSquished]

The Minimum Wage being raised to something resembling reasonable should not just be spoken about as if it should happen in an isolated petri dish - it should spur a movement and discussion that a lot of wages should go up for a lot of jobs. SS should be adjusted to reflect any significant increase in prices but if we don't do something starting at the bottom, we are missing the boat. It all needs to be part of a bigger discussion.

You have business owners that simply look at labor as an inconvenient expense and will always try to treat employees as worse as possible in the wage arena. You have the opposite side of those business owners, like Dan Price, who dared experiment on the other extreme, and got called a socialist (how that makes any sense) by the moneyed interests that want to keep a permanent class of underpaid workers at bay.

 

[SmCaudata]

Workers are just part of business. Business owners complaining about wages would be like them whining about paying going rate for raw materials. I'm sorry, just because you own a business, does not mean you have the right to pay substandard wages. I don't subsidize the other costs of my local shop on the corner, why should I subsidize their labor costs?

 

[mect]

Raising the minimum wage isn't going to help those people in poverty because they're working for $7.25/hour. It's going to hurt them because businesses will use automation to replace their jobs. Better to have a job making $7.25 than no job at all.

And new jobs will be created by automation, jobs that pay $15/hr at a minimum. This is one of the reasons a high minimum wage coupled with a strong social safety net is a good thing. It prevents us from being inefficient purely because we have cheap labor. By increasing minimum wage, we incentivize increasing productivity. As this happens, yes, some people will temporarily lose their jobs. This is why you provide a strong safety net. As the economy adjusts to increased automation, new jobs are created, and people that were displaced can then go to work in these new jobs.

Or, we can even consider the scenario where new jobs aren't created. You now are accomplishing the same level of production with fewer working hours. So you now decrease the work week, and we can have the same gdp per capita with a shorter work week.

Automation is a good thing is we can spread the benefits of the improved productivity throughout the population instead of just to the owner class.

 

[SmCaudata]

Bringing automation into this simply points to the eventual need for a universal basic income. There is already a job shortage that is suppressing wages. It is only going to get worse. Automation eliminated more jobs than it creates. Automation has already taken off and it isn't because minimum wage is too high. There are many things robots can do faster, better, and cheaper in the end.

Without minimum wage increases what will happen is that as we eliminate the current low paying jobs, we will see a reduction in wages for those currently making a living wage.

Supply side economics is not a policy that works when we are talking about people.

 

[Moonbeam]

I know that when I have an idea that I'd like to see implemented, I like to start out by attacking people most likely to agree with my idea.

Maybe the perfect is the enemy of the good.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yeah, I suggest you do some research on the subject or take an updated class on economics because price increases aren’t the only option. If what you were saying was true then we’d see spikes in inflation every time the minimum wage was raised.

I'm not even sure why he thinks inflation would be some huge evil that he's acting like that. Plus the "ohmygawd inflation" assholes ignore that inflation was happening while wages stagnated. That's in fact basically the entire fucking argument about why minimum wage needs a big increase now is that there's been such wage stagnation that there are people that have not been able to achieve expected economic stability (stuff like buying a house, affording proper health care, raise a family, etc) that they should have been via working for 20-30 years.

 

[nickqt]

As a business owner with 150 employees and ~70% of them at state minimum wage or within 10% of it, I wouldn't even care. What do you guys think is going to happen if you moved everything to $15.00/hr minimum? I and all of my competitors along with practically every industry that is affected by this change is going to raise their prices. Which is going to be a lot industries. So I'm going to make the exact same amount of money I was before and you are going to pay more for my product. Everyone else in my industry is going to do the exact same thing and these prices will become the new accepted normal. The one thing that it will do is drive my poorly run competitors out of business because the operating capitol that they need is going to be much greater now. So if anything I'm going to make more money.

Now the people who are going to really be hurt by this is everyone on a fixed income. As the pricing structure on everything swings sharply upgrade by a 15/hr minimum, these individuals and families have 0 means of increasing their income levels. Then we need the government to go back through again and adjust SS and various state benefits to help these people.

OK, let's do it.

 

[owensdj]

And new jobs will be created by automation, jobs that pay $15/hr at a minimum...

Yes new jobs will be created by increased automation, but they won't benefit most of the people who lost their jobs due to that automation because they won't have the skills. We're moving into a time in which a significant percentage of the population will be permanently unemployable. Increasing the minimum wage will just accelerate that.

 

[dank69]

Yes new jobs will be created by increased automation, but they won't benefit most of the people who lost their jobs due to that automation because they won't have the skills. We're moving into a time in which a significant percentage of the population will be permanently unemployable. Increasing the minimum wage will just accelerate that.

UBI and be done with it.