Minimum Wage Vote/decision: good/bad?

This can be a touchy subject, BUT...
I think NOT passing the minimum wage increase was actually GOOD.

Reason being:

I don't feel it's up to the Gov't to decide what a company should pay an individual.

If you have some schmuck that barely does enough work to keep a job, why should you have to pay him a Gov't decided amount?

If the dude is worth 2.50 an hour, & he'll work for that much, no problem.
When you are "required" to pay someone a minimum, they may not be worth what they are paid.
This also makes it hard to negotiate wages at times.

If an employer has extra money tied up with a less productive person, it's harder for YOU (a HARD WORKER) to negotiate a higher salary, based on what YOU are worth.

(make sense?)

Also, some employers will only start pay at the minimum wage, because there IS one. Rather than the employee, or potential employee bidding for what HE/SHE thinks is fair. (Thus, squelching the negotiations)

I know other people are disappointed by the decision on this recent vote, but these are the reasons why I was happy to see it not passed.

Am I right on this?
Or do I misunderstand the whole thing?

If I'm wrong, I don't mind being corrected at all!
Just let me know what I'm missing on this subject.

Have you ever tried living on minimum wage and/or supporting children on it? There are a lot of people out there who have no choice b/c of things that happen in life beyond their control. Of course that's not the case with everyone, but that is reality. Coming from a solid middle class background with every opportunity given to me, it took me years to find the compassion and understanding that I have now for those not born with the same advantages. They are many.

The bill to increase the minimum wage was pure Republican chicanery. Cold-blooded and foolish. Bill Frist is without a soul and might just find himself rotting in hell with all his wealth and greed. I say this as a Republican. And a Christian.

It was all about passing that massive tax cut for the most wealthy. Do not be fooled.

The most sickening thing to me, is the fact that since the last minimum wage hike, congress has voted themselves THREE pay raises. As if they need a dime of that money!



They should all be donating that money to the victims of Katrina or to the families of our fallen soldiers. Shame on them all!

Anyone that has ever NOT slept through a course in economics is very aware of the futility of any increase in the minimum wage. It really is a no-brainer, and the entire debate is only effective politically because everyone in favor of it, is living with their heads in a box, obviously.

The market wage rate tends toward a height at which all those eager to earn wages get jobs and all those eager to employ workers can hire as many as they want. It tends toward the establishment of what is nowadays called full employment. Where there is neither government nor union interference with the labor market, there is only voluntary or catallactic unemployment. But as soon as external pressure and compulsion, be it on the part of the government or on the part of the unions, tries to fix wage rates at a higher point, institutional unemployment emerges. While there prevails on the unhampered labor market a tendency for catallactic unemployment to disappear, institutional unemployment cannot disappear as long as the government or the unions are successful in the enforcement of their fiat. If the minimum wage rate refers only to a part of the various occupations while other sectors of the labor market are left free, those losing their jobs on its account enter the free branches of business and increase the supply of labor in them. When unionism was restricted to skilled labor mainly, the wage rise achieved by the unions did not lead to institutional unemployment. It merely lowered the height of wage rates in those branches in which there were no efficient unions or no unions at all. The corollary of the rise in wages for organized workers was a drop in wages for unorganized workers. But with the spread of government interference with wages and with government support of unionism, conditions have changed. Institutional unemployment has become a chronic or permanent mass phenomenon.www.mises.org...

It really is very basic and hard to not understand unless you fall prey to the emotional baggage that is ever present in such an argument.

That baggage does not help though when the Government forces a rise in a minimum wage and unemployment rises at a significantly equal rate. This is not conjecture, but a proven formula.

The mere fact that if you force employers to pay more, they simply raise the price of their goods, thus causing the same "poor" people you were crying about, to simply pay more for their necessities, thus negating any possible positive effect.

Come on people, read a book will ya!

Semper

That was a nice presentation. Thx.

But the reality is you're talking out of a fish bowl.

No the reality is I'm talking scientific proven data, and your talking emotional insignificant rhetoric.

Argue all you want to, there are many, MANY on here that hold the same emotional, unsupported view that you do so you will have plenty of company.

The sad truth is your wrong. Wrong in every economic fact, formula and theory. Yet emotionally there can be no argument.

Semper

Originally posted by marko1970
This can be a touchy subject, BUT...
I think NOT passing the minimum wage increase was actually GOOD.

Reason being:

I don't feel it's up to the Gov't to decide what a company should pay an individual.

If you have some schmuck that barely does enough work to keep a job, why should you have to pay him a Gov't decided amount?

If the dude is worth 2.50 an hour, & he'll work for that much, no problem.
When you are "required" to pay someone a minimum, they may not be worth what they are paid.
This also makes it hard to negotiate wages at times.

If an employer has extra money tied up with a less productive person, it's harder for YOU (a HARD WORKER) to negotiate a higher salary, based on what YOU are worth.

(make sense?)

Also, some employers will only start pay at the minimum wage, because there IS one. Rather than the employee, or potential employee bidding for what HE/SHE thinks is fair. (Thus, squelching the negotiations)

the problem is that companies DO only pay minnimum wage. it does not matter how good you are at a job, a lot of the time there is NO negotiation for a higher wage. companies want to make as much proffit as possible. not to mention that those in the top jobs give themselves verry high wages. as an example the company i work for typicaly pays slightly over minimum with a 25-35 cent raise each year. as i own some stock in the company i also know that the top people earn MILLIONS each per year while the average employee earns so little that they need to work two full time jobs to survive. now i could understand if the ceo would earn say a couple hundred thousand a year but over five million? while it's full time employees have to live in poverty? that is why minimum wages ARE needed.

i know of some employees i work with that are good workers, are always on time, do good quality work, that either have to live in subsidized houseing, use food banks or have to still live with their parrents in order to survive. quite a few even have second or third jobs, jobs that some unemployed could use. i know we had one guy who because he had kids worked three jobs, two of which were industrial and automotive, he was so tired because of this that he almost lost his hand because he was too tired to think straight. he was lucky and only ended up severly hurting himself. had he lost the hand he then would have ended up unable to work which would have left him on wellfare. how is this good for the economy?

now where i live minnimum wage won't even pay for a small crappy appartment that could be considdered unsafe. i think minimum wage for someone who is a full time employee should cover at LEAST a decent place to live, food, utilities and transport to and from work. doesn't that seem fair? it doesn't matter that someone is a good or even a bad worker the companies only pay the minimum they can. this is WHY we need minimum wages and WHY it needs to be raised.

I work for a family owned business which could not operate with its normal capacity if the minimum wage were $7.50. I make the most of the non-family members, and I work about 30 hours a week. I have student loans to keep me afloat, and I use the job on Fridays and the weekend to keep cash in my pocket. Loans and credit are the best options for those who have to support themselves off anything relatively minimum-wage-like.

Increased minimum wage is good. But there was no stand-alone minimum wage bill. It was added to a bill with estate tax. The dems didnt want to give the reps another tax break,so the reps didnt vote for the bill.

Stand alone Minimum wage increase would not be good.

Minimum wage increase along with the end of the death tax is agreeable.

The real question is why Democrats would be against the latter? A majority of minimum wage earners are between 16-20 years old. The minimum wage increase would help these young people now. With 40-50 years of hard work, the repeal of the death tax would help them in the future. It's a win-win situation!

Why do Democrats want to keep people down? Are they scared of losing their base? When Democrats bash the rich, does that mean they don't want people to achieve?

The person above was correct in that if you raise the minimum wage it would increase the unemployment rate. As an added benefit, any increase in their salaries from raising the minimum wage would just be lost on increased goods prices passed on to ALL of us which were rasied to recoop the cost of raising their salaries. It makes no sense whatsoever to increase the minimum wage outside of a fairy tale. He/she was right...read a book, and better yet use some common sense. The answer to not finding yourself in a minimum wage job is to study hard in school and use the opportunities afforded to you (and let's be honest here, poor people, especially minorities, have TREMENDOUS opportunities available to them that many don't use).

I studied criminal justice in college and couldn't get hired as a police officer after I graduated because I wasn't a minority or a woman. I was in my mid 20's working a dead end job making $175 a week myself and decided I could have a life living in a rat apartment with 2 roommates stewing over the fact that I couldn't get a job, or I could get my lazy butt some skills. I spent a year studying Microsoft networking, and at the end of that year had a great job. I haven't looked back since. The answer to breaking out of minimum wage is to empower yourself. It's a hard thing to do as I lived through it myself, but it can be done, and not at the expense of the taxpayer.

[edit on 8/6/2006 by Escrotumus]

Here's a quote from an AP story from today:

Andrew Taylor writes, "Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is the lowest its been in 50 years."

Sounds like compassionate conservatism is really working...


I wonder how many people around ATS actually live under someone earning min. wage, or is earning it themselves? Probly not many, as being able to afford a computer and the internet wouldn't exactly be so easy.

Its pathetic. The richest country on earth can't look out more for its struggling citizens. Hardworking people out there are drowning in the inability to keep up. And its not because they're not trying. The whole system is stacked against our lowest earners. And according to that AP quote, their dollar doesn't go nearly as far as it should. I'm not in poverty and I feel that myself.

As for the bloated paychecks of our congress critters go, they should all take a hefty paycut and divert that money to much greater needed programs.. to say feed our hungry, or job programs.

Greed and lack of humanity is out of control.

[edit on 8/6/06 by EastCoastKid]

I of course also wish there was a way for all people to be equal, but unfortunately that type of reality only exists in a communist's theory book. There has always been a class system in every culture and there always will be. Communism has been tried and has failed for many reasons too complicated to explain here. The reality is that people can all pull themselves out of a poor lifestyle into a better one with a lot of hard work and dedication.

Originally posted by Escrotumus
I of course also wish there was a way for all people to be equal, but unfortunately that type of reality only exists in a communist's theory book.

I'm not saying anything about people being equal. People will never be equal anywhere. I have no problem w/that. My problem is that I live in a wealthy society, floating in excessive materialism from every corner, and we still have an abundance of poverty - homelessness, no healthcare, hunger. Why?

I was just thinking of the call to Christians to donate, or to give up to the church a tithe of ten percent out of every paycheck. What was that for? To do God's work with. To cover what I was discussing above. Its compassionate. I think those who follow that call to charity, make it up in spades on other levels.

I should do better. More. In whatever ways I can.

Communism has been tried and has failed for many reasons too complicated to explain here.

When I served in the military, you have no idea how much I loathed communism and those who pushed it.

The reality is that people can all pull themselves out of a poor lifestyle into a better one with a lot of hard work and dedication.

The reality of that statement is, yes people can do that. At least some of them. Some never can. Sadly, some never try for whatever reasons. I say, though, its time for conservatives to re-evaluate the root causes of all of this. And raise the minimum wage, already. They're dollars are currently worth spit. That is not fair.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Its pathetic. The richest country on earth can't look out more for its struggling citizens. Hardworking people out there are drowning in the inability to keep up. And its not because they're not trying. The whole system is stacked against our lowest earners. And according to that AP quote, their dollar doesn't go nearly as far as it should. I'm not in poverty and I feel that myself.

As for the bloated paychecks of our congress critters go, they should all take a hefty paycut and divert that money to much greater needed programs.. to say feed our hungry, or job programs.

Greed and lack of humanity is out of control.

[edit on 8/6/06 by EastCoastKid]

How is the system stacked? Right now we have openings at our company that we can't find people for. My department has been working short handed for over two years because we can't find qualified people. There are good paying jobs availible for qualified people, what we have is a shortage of qualified people.

Raising the minimum wage isn't the answer. Say you have 10 people working at a store for $5.35 an hour. The minimum wage is raised to say $7.13 an hour. What you are going to end up with is 6 people working for $7.13 per hour.

I don't believe in Government handout programs because one,people become dependant on them and two, the cost of administering them becomes greater than the benefits of them. I'll buy a jobs training program though. I was lucky enough to take advantage of one when it was offered to me and it was the best thing I ever did.

Yes, being white middle class growing up in the 80s, I had access to AP courses (which I hated and did not take) or courses at the Vocational School. Being the punk I was, I opted for the Vo. I still glad I did, altho I went back college and served in the military.

Part of the reason I did not take AP courses (tho I went to college straight outta HS anyway, on athletic scholarships) was b/c I had little academic interest and a lack of guidance from my mother. My father is dead and she remarried someone who became a criminal.

Without guidance, kids fall through the cracks. That is just one small way kids go astray, making bad decisions that haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Take new rules in academic aid. If you have been found guilty of drug possession or sale, you cannot get financial aid to go to college. That is very oppressive. Kids make mistakes and often need and want a path out to success. Root causes...

Once you fall behind and you have no support (unlike many in the white middle class), its very hard to catch up, financially. Oftentimes people spiral out economic control b/c they incur too many penalties at once (traffic tickets, high insurance premiums).. its endless.

I am simply saying that these people could really use some relief and helping hand, if they're willing to do their part. That's how Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt saw things. I'm with them.