Dunkin' CEO: $15 minimum wage is 'outrageous'

originally posted by: AshOnMyTomatoes
Simple question: why is a significantly huge portion of one person's life worth more money than the same amount of another person's life?

Simple answer:
Because the supply and quality of the product offered in that "amount of a person's life", and the market's demand and estimation of worth for it, vary.

originally posted by: ColCurious

originally posted by: AshOnMyTomatoes
Simple question: why is a significantly huge portion of one person's life worth more money than the same amount of another person's life?

Simple answer:
Because the supply and quality of the product offered in that "amount of a person's life", and the market's demand and estimation of worth for it, vary.

Gross.

Here is how the economics of this works. If the minimum wage was $10 / hour, that would mean that people would be able to get off of food stamps and other subsidies that cost the taxpayers money. It would also mean that people would have more money to spend on things like donuts, thus boosting businesses.

This works up to a point - somewhere between $10 an hour to $11 an hour. $15 an hour might be a bit much. I am for raising the national minimum wage a bit though. I think it could use some adjusting in that sense.

a reply to: BatheInTheFountain

Why does the owner of the business have to make double what I do?
I'm sorry. Silly me. I guess I forgot again.

Because he "owns" it?

Let me teach you something important right here:

The employees own the business.


WHY LUKAS WHY?

Because without them there'd be no product.
Your "ownership" would then equal precisely 0.

The owner's an accountant.

In the mafia you'd trust your bookie to go by the rules and not f#*k you over,
and if he did, he'd have soldiers coming in his sleep.
Because even the mafia had a sense of honor.
Capitalism apparently does not, and it shows in these forums.

How the modern world has taken the concept of upward mobility
and so thoroughly inbred it cross eyed and unable to speak...
How we've glorified being a savage and started to laugh at those who suggest civility
and common decency....
How people on this thread can so willfully speak like heartless apes
in favor of their own egos in flagrant disregard of human life....

it is just as thoroughly beyond me.

I think I want to crawl in a hole now.

Basically my point is:

If you can't afford to pay your employees an honest wage,
you can't afford to have a business.

Doesn't that make sense to people?

I assure you the only reason we have welfare
is so the middle class can shrink and the upper class can feed
like a succubus at a brothel.

Raise the minimum wage, and make the dumb gobblers actually work for their money so they can't get government benefits.
I work with a lady who takes pride in abusing the system.
She was bragging to me about how she didn't want a second job because the government pays the bills.
She works like 16 hours a week. Basically, the days I have off.
It makes me want to vomit. She's not the brightest, and we would all be okay
if she had to work full time.

Ya'll who are against min wage hikes:
I really think at least half of your reservation comes from people like her.
So maybe that's our common ground in this discussion?

originally posted by: darkbake
Here is how the economics of this works. If the minimum wage was $10 / hour, that would mean that people would be able to get off of food stamps and other subsidies that cost the taxpayers money. It would also mean that people would have more money to spend on things like donuts, thus boosting businesses.

This works up to a point - somewhere between $10 an hour to $11 an hour. $15 an hour might be a bit much. I am for raising the national minimum wage a bit though. I think it could use some adjusting in that sense.

I'm just quoting you so what you said has a second chance to be seen.

a reply to: AshOnMyTomatoes

Real answer: Because we live in a world of damnably persistent illusions.
People made this system out of necessity to survive, and some vampires saw it giving off radiant heat and
decided to swoop in to suck it dry.

Umm... I'll use an analogy.

Did you ever date a girl/ guy whom you thought really liked you,
and so you let yourself fall for them,
only to find out they were just using you for something?

Like a girl who only sleeps with a guy so she has a place to stay, or so he'll buy her things.
Nobody's into it.
Some people just don't have the courage to admit it to others.
One day maybe.

Cheers

originally posted by: muse7
I'm sorry but $15 bucks an hour for fast food workers IS outrageous.

The CEO might be overpaid but he probably went to university and busted his ass at school to at least deserve some of the money he's making.

If these people want to make $15 an hour then they should go to college and get a degree in something useful that's in demand or learn a trade that's in demand.

That doesn't work. Every single person in the country could have a doctorate and the grunt work would still need to be done, and those people would still make low wages. The millennials are the most educated generation in the history of the world, yet our purchasing power is lower than it has been for any generation in a western civilization in over 400 years.

Something is wrong.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP
I find it outrageous that some unskilled nobody who hands out doughnuts expects $15 and hour when people have been sweating and sacrificing body parts for far far less.

Did you ever think that due to globalism which causes local workers to compete with people where a dollar has 50x the purchasing power, that the person who is sacrificing body parts for less than $15 an hour is also being underpaid?

originally posted by: Aazadan
The millennials are the most educated generation in the history of the world, yet our purchasing power is lower than it has been for any generation in a western civilization in over 400 years.

Something is wrong.

What is wrong is many go to college and get a crap degree paying 60k for it all on some promise from the college that it will net them a 100k a year job and it gets them 10 bucks an hour instead. They then blame business and not the college for tricking them, and so what is wrong is that they do not think a valuable skill is worth anything anymore.

a reply to: BatheInTheFountain

I am a machinist making $15 an hour. Nevermind what I did in the 90's when I was making $30. (Thanks, Nafta, Cafta!)

I have worked in Fast Food (Pizza in my case, in my teens). I have managed multiple Sandwich shops in rough neighborhoods where broad daylight robbery was "a thing."

Lets talk about working conditions in a machine shop for a second. It's hot and humid. I am breathing vaporized coolant. I am on my feet for 8, 10, 12 hours a day. I work with chip that I KNOW will cut me again in a few minutes. The learning curve is steep. I actually know what "people use this stupid math for" because I use it every day to deliver quality parts to my customers. My parts are often safety related, and letting bad ones pass me can cause someone's death. My boss is a wonderful man, who gave me a shot at doing this when I was on a treadmill of perpetual layoff / outsourcing. He taught me to teach myself how to set up Mills and Lathes. I can earn a bonus each week that amounts to a couple of bucks an hour if I hustle and take ownership of my portion of seeing the shop reach certain "doable" goals. I often work 48-55 hours a week to help ensure we hit these targets and because, frankly, 8-15 hours at time and a half help make ends meet better than 40 hours at $15.

Do fast food workers deserve $15 an hour too? Because if they do, I "deserve" $25.

But contract machining is a funny thing. Can my boss pay me $25 and still make money? How would raising my rate affect his exposure? If he had to do that for all 20 of us, could he stay open or would our parts go to another shop? Another country?

It hurts me to type this stuff because I want to cheer for a better wage for everyone. I KNOW that the real economy is built on the backs of working people buying goods and services at street level, and not because a "rich" guy invests his cash. But there are real questions as to how to promote more economic participation at ground level without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and a blanket call for doubling the minimum wage doesn't address much if any of them.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
What is wrong is many go to college and get a crap degree paying 60k for it all on some promise from the college that it will net them a 100k a year job and it gets them 10 bucks an hour instead. They then blame business and not the college for tricking them, and so what is wrong is that they do not think a valuable skill is worth anything anymore.

But it's not just crap degrees. Computer Science and Software Engineering are massively overproduced because everyone is just importing their labor from India using H1B's. In fact, according to this all STEM degrees are being overproduced. The so called useless degrees (a point I would argue) have been in decline for years as tuition has gone up and people have realized they need to be able to pay for their loans.

a reply to: LAkadian

Let me teach you something important right here: 

The employees own the business. 


WHY LUKAS WHY? 

Because without them there'd be no product. 
Your "ownership" would then equal precisely 0. 

If an employee doesn't want to work then the owner can find someone else.

It should be easy to find someone that can ask "do you want fries with that?"

a reply to: 0zzymand0s

The whole point of a minimum wage increase is that you shrink the gaps between higher and lower paid people. This means that while you would likely see a small raise from such a thing, your purchasing power would decline.

Most of this is a result of purchasing power declining for decades. It has been going down for 40 years. An increase to $15/hour, if such a thing is even economically possible right now still doesn't fix the problem. Minimum wage if it had kept it's purchasing power from the peak would be in the 22-24 per hour range right now. Anyone making below that is effectively making worse than a McDonalds burger flipper made in 1960.

You can't just increase wages to 24 an hour overnight though, such a shift has to be very gradual, like 1% above the rate of inflation per year for 40 years.

Basically, in the time frame needed to fix this, anyone working now won't be working when this is fixed... if we start right now. But maybe your children will be.

The main disagreement I have is that people think that CEOs shouldn't make much more than the employees.

The mistakes of a CEO can cost Millions or Billions of dollars. The mistake of dropping fries does what?

This economy runs on supply and demand. Everyone can serve coffee, so they get paid less. Not everyone can do heart surgeries, so it pays more.

If the employees protest and choose not to serve coffee anymore until they get paid more, then the owner can fire them and easily find other people can also serve coffee for the same wage.

That's why they get paid the minimum. Because there are more than enough people who can do the same job.

a reply to: muse7

No one ever broke their spines or physically damaged themselves in the pursuit of an academic education. He absorbed data, and if he is anything like many other ruthless business persons, he probably did not do as well as those who went to college because of love of a subject and affinity with it.

Large businesses should pay everyone that works for them, a living wage, and they should consider themselves lucky to have the opportunity to do so. The alternatives all result in eventual collapse of both their businesses, and the wider economy in time to come, not to mention general chaos, riots, protests, property damage, and even internal warfare.

No, what's "outrageous" is trying to survive in this economy on anything less. Does the CEO have his head that far in the sand or something?

originally posted by: ugmold
CEO of Dunkin Donuts, a Man who makes $500 an hour, finds it outrageous that fast food workers should make $15 an hour.

This whiny creep who is extremely overpaid, like most all CEO's, their only skill is to be a Ruthless Bastard.

Personally, I WANT the person running a multinational, multi-million dollar business being paid a lot. They don't waltz out of uni and get handed that, they work for years and work their way up and the salary is commensurate. This notion of the hand-wringing, evil CEO is puerile. If they run their company well (which DD does) then I invest in them and get a return. If they run it poorly, then I don't.

Not all CEOs are wonderful and not all are bad. I've worked for many who are extremely conscientious and their hard work, along with everyone else's, helped the companies I worked for grow, share profit, increase my salary and so on.

Why would a person with a GED get paid $15/hour? I worked as an entry level graphic designer making little more than that, after scraping by to get a degree. Nobody owed me anything, I wanted more so I worked for it.

While is easier to be forgotten when it comes to how capitalism works in America it you are in working class, is very truth that big corporations and multinationals working in the US insource most of their workforce, that leave the littler business to take the burden of hiring those that are left, with high unemployment and plenty to chose from including from the illegal pool, we will hear those small businesses been hurt the most.

Is a very big division in this nation and for what it seems is been perpetuated by the inability of the government to be fair to all.

Catering to big business while forcing the tax payer to pay for the shortcomings of the working poor, that work long hours and still needs government assistance.

The irony, laws has never been fair and never will as long as Washington is run by elites and big money backers, a strong middle class force is a danger to their status.

a reply to: RoyBatty

As a cagey investor, would you have done better to invest in Walmart or Costco 5 years ago?