WtF? WHAT? WTF? Oklahoma Legislators and the Minimum Wage

[Oldgamer]

Minimum wage was is a law created and designed to place a price floor on low skill jobs and ensure people were not paid wages that would go below the typical prevailing market wage.

However minimum wage is most certainly NOT designed to be a "Living Wage". The minimum wage was/is supposed to be the bare bottom wage you could pay anyone to do work that basically anyone can and could do with little to no training and/or skill involved and was/is kept low to ensure those jobs do not disappear.

Minimum wage must certainly is not a wage scale designed to be a "living wage". Of which that term is nothing more then a nebulous politically inspired phrase created distort what the minimum wage is supposed to do and to try associate fry cooks, ditch diggers, etc with actual skilled laborers in the marketplace who have the training, education and/or skills to demand higher wages. If you think that you can push for a higher minimum wage without repercussions to those looking to enter the work force doing minimum wage work you are sadly mistaken. You'll end up doing way more harm then good attempting to distort the true meaning of what a minimum wage is and why certain jobs are not worth anything above a minimum wage.

I completely disagree with you. So do about 70% of Americans as well.

 

[berzerker60]

FDR on the minimum wage, when establishing it in 1938:

“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

“By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.”

“Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com...-the-minimum-wage/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

 

[AViking]

Well shit berzerker60.... /thread

 

[realibrad]

About 5 years ago, I was all for minimum wage. Then, I started getting into economics and found the most compelling arguments were against the minimum wage.

The idea that raising the cost of labor is somehow a net good is flawed. We dont like to think people have a dollar value, but labor does. A company will not hire a low skilled worker that produces less than he is worth, not because the company is evil, but because what money could it pay him with?

Maybe, you can make an argument for social programs that are a tax on society to give some goods and services, but the minimum wage has to be one of the worst ways to "help" the poor.

 

[AViking]

How would you fix the social inequality in the US? The unfortunate statistics tell us that if you grow up poor you have somewhere between a 3% and 12% chance of making it in the USA. The American dream is pretty much dead so if you don't somehow get people out of poverty you'll just have an ever increasing population of poor people. Eventually the USA will have to admit it has a problem. Who wants to live in a USA where the poor are growing, the middle class is shrinking, and the rich get richer?

 

[Incorruptible]

How would you fix the social inequality in the US? The unfortunate statistics tell us that if you grow up poor you have somewhere between a 3% and 12% chance of making it in the USA. The American dream is pretty much dead so if you don't somehow get people out of poverty you'll just have an ever increasing population of poor people. Eventually the USA will have to admit it has a problem. Who wants to live in a USA where the poor are growing, the middle class is shrinking, and the rich get richer?

So what's your solution? Steal more money from hardworking people to give to people on welfare like yourself?

Allow the private sector to create jobs but that's not going to happen with obama.

FDR on the minimum wage, when establishing it in 1938:

“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

“By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.”

“Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com...-the-minimum-wage/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Is this the same FDR who was a racist and interned the Japanese? Just because he says the minimum wage is needed doesn't mean anything. Who are you to dictate to private businesses how much to pay? This is a private matter and people who have never owned a business should just stop spouting their BS.

Minimum wage should be based on supply and demand and between the employer/employee and not some idiots who have never owned a business.

 

[realibrad]

How would you fix the social inequality in the US? The unfortunate statistics tell us that if you grow up poor you have somewhere between a 3% and 12% chance of making it in the USA. The American dream is pretty much dead so if you don't somehow get people out of poverty you'll just have an ever increasing population of poor people. Eventually the USA will have to admit it has a problem. Who wants to live in a USA where the poor are growing, the middle class is shrinking, and the rich get richer?

The question is, what is the solution and how do we measure the problem/success?

The US has instituted more social programs than it ever has, and yet no matter how many things we do to reverse/stop/slow the gap, it keeps growing. Perhaps our "solutions" are not working. Take government assistance for college.

Fact 1, poor people go to college less. Fact 2, poor people pay taxes, and some of that goes to college tuition assistance.

Conclusion, the poor are helping the middle and upper class go to college. It was not meant to be like this. The very program that is supposed to "help" the poor only hurt them. The government raises taxes to pay for college tuition, and some of those increases are paid for by the poor.