Actually, your duty as a business owner is to turn a profit and to provide for YOUR family. If you can't do that due to increased costs you either raise prices, outsource, layoff or close shop. You're not running a charity.
The minimum wage
- Thread starter vodkazvictim
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Actually, your duty as a business owner is to turn a profit and to provide for YOUR family. If you can't do that due to increased costs you either raise prices, outsource, layoff or close shop. You're not running a charity.
No, you're not running a charity, but you also don't employ slaves as it's illegal. See, this is why labor laws exist. Because of amoral sociopaths who want to abuse people for their own gain.
If you can't afford to hire workers on a liveable wage, you can't afford to hire workers full stop.
I've turned down jobs because I didn't feel they were paying enough. That's hardly slavery.
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contradiction in bold.
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contradiction in bold.
And yet there aren't 9 year olds working in coal mines. It's not one or the other.
This.
You do realize that the reason that is the case is because of labor laws, including minimum wage laws. Toss them out (without empowering unions to a greater degree) and everything sinks lower. We've been there before. See, the job market is about competition. Not just employees competing for jobs, but also employers competing for employees. If you shred the minimum then employers have less to compete with and thus can offer less.
Except the job I turned down was paying way more than minimum wage as well as the job I accepted. They were offering what they felt the position was worth and I went with the highest bidder. That wasn't an imposed minimum wage at work but rather the free market.
Except that the established minimum wage sets the bar, and competition moves upward from there. Knock out the foundation and everything above it falls down. Changing the minimum changes the bar for competition thus changing the standard. What a company must pay becomes less, and thus what other companies must pay to compete with those wages to attract workers also becomes less. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and as you said, no one is "running a charity".
That's what you're ignoring; that changing the minimum wage doesn't just change what jobs offering the minimum wage are worth, it changes what everything is worth by creating a new standard for competition. You aren't thinking big picture.
Eventually people will be forced to work for wages that aren't livable because the standard has lowered to the point where it's mandatory to secure a job. Again, we've been there, it's why we have labor laws. The root cause of their existence (no one is "running a charity") hasn't changed, so removing the laws doesn't leave the current status quo, it just puts us right back to where we started.
As has been pointed out, Germany doesn't have a minimum wage and yet what you say would happen hasn't.
Maybe you want to read all of what I've been posting. Germany has massively powerful trade unions, the likes of which do not exist in the United States. And unions are currently under attack and having their teeth removed in most States, so... yeah, maybe you don't want to go by Germany.
Public sector unions, paid by taxpayers.
Does it? Or does it just widen the spectrum?
Mayhem
Banned
I work in a "tipping" industry. The problem is, the tips remain the same while prices still rise. For example: I have the WSOP coming up at the end of May. Like always, myself and fellow WSOP dealers will get minimum wage + tips. The tips will be the same as they were 5 - 10 years ago, so the wages will be the same but prices are up. And in some cases, prices are waaay up. 10 years ago, I could find canned tuna for 35 cents, on sale. Now I consider myself lucky if I can get it for 85 cents a can. Chicken Noodle and Cream of Mushroom soups are double what they were not long ago. The list goes on. So, living on tips isn't a rationale for adjusting a minimum wage for me.
No, union rights in general are under attack. The Republicans are trying to (and in some cases succeeding) pass laws which, among other factors, prohibit private unions from collecting dues (Michigan's "Right-to-Work" for instance).
How does removing the bottom rung and making it possible to pay wages that people can't live off of it, and thus lowering the entry point for the competition, widen the spectrum? It doesn't. It makes a new low, and lowers the need to compete above thus lessening the whole because, as you said, this is business and no one is running a charity and thus they aren't paying more than they have to in order to be competitive. Your own logic derails your stance.
meesterperfect
Hiliary 2020
Welcome to Obama's America
Actually the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which increased the standard minimum wage, but left the tipped minimum wage frozen, happened in 2007. It was put forward by the Democrats, but had a fair amount of Republican support and was signed into law by Bush.
Mayhem
Banned
Stop it. Just stop. It's your Conservative pals that are against the minimum wage, let alone raising it.
There is nothing in my post that has the slightest thing to do with Obama. You'll never get that this is why your side loses and will continue to do so.
vodkazvictim
Why save the world, when you can rule it?
:iloveyou:
Yes, there should be one. And at a minimum it should be livable. Maybe if were called a"'liveable wage" they would have no choice but to raise it.
bobjustbob
Proud member of FreeOnes Hall Of Fame. Retired to
Livable is a subjective term. I think that some of you people are aiming too high on the scale of what should be livable. Does this have to include a minimal space to live in? Does it include the expenses for your own car? How much allowed for clothing and food quality? Does everyone need a cell phone? Minimum wage for what quality of life are you asking for? I think if you are really honest about the minimum wage as livable and what you expect for quality of life for those wages are far apart.
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