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Originally posted by Catalyst317
I just had this discussion with people at work today. He is a synopsis of how it went:
Worker @ 19.5 hours: I heard Obama was going to raise minimum wage!!!
Me (Manager): You think that will solve you problems?
Worker: Yes, I will finally be able to afford a place of my own. (second job and government assistance)
Me: Pfft... you do know that this is a smoke screen right?
Worker: What do you mean?
Me: They can raise your wage to $10 an hour and it will do no good.
Worker: If I made $10 per hour I would be golden!!!
Me: Okay, lets say you owned a business, paid each employee $10 per hour and made a product and sold $20,000 worth of product It cost $10,000 to make each item due to payroll, and you ended with $10,000 in profit.
However, they double your salary and now you make $20 per hour and the cost of making each product increases. Now you make $20,000 in sales still, but because of your pay increase it costs $20,000 to make the product. Now your company is breaking even. Why would you stay in business?
The only way to make your $10,000 back is to increase the price of your product and pass the increase on to the consumer.
It's common business. Either increase the cost of your product or lower the cost of your manufacturing (sending jobs overseas).
How would increasing the minimum wage do anything?
It's a big smoke screen and mis-direction.
It sounds good, but it will never work. ( do research on all the previous times it was increased)
Originally posted by Catalyst317
reply to post by RadicalRebel
I only used 100% increase to make the math easier. My intention was to show that it does not matter about raising the minimum wage because the companies will raise their prices to offset the increase in overhead.
Originally posted by bri6844
The problem out there is there are alot of unskilled workers who still need to support a family.
If it were up to corporations, they would pay employees half of what the minimum wage is now!
It cost alot more to support a family in todays world, but salary increases have not increased to support this
Originally posted by Hopechest
Originally posted by bri6844
The problem out there is there are alot of unskilled workers who still need to support a family.
If it were up to corporations, they would pay employees half of what the minimum wage is now!
It cost alot more to support a family in todays world, but salary increases have not increased to support this
So because some shmuck decides to have a family before he can afford it the rest of us should have to pay a higher price at the store?
Dumb
Why not just send him 3 bucks to buy a pack of condoms so he doesn't put himself in that situation? Oh yea, if he was actually responsible he would have used them in the first place.
Sorry but they need to take care of themselves.
Originally posted by iwilliam
reply to post by Catalyst317
The problem with this country is people who have (fallacious) opinions like yours-- insisting that the guy at the bottom should "know his place" and shouldn't ever expect to make more than the unfair, tiny little slice he works (just as hard as you) to get. Because, of course, you guys in the middle, and those at the top, deserve such a bigger slice than the little guys do (usually for comparable work)-- so if any attempt is made to compensate the little guy more equally (mind you, not even equally-- just more equal, in the eyes of the minimum wage worker), you'll have to constantly jack up your prices, so you can keep getting larger slice of the pie than the little guy.
That's a paraphrase of what you just said, btw.
And it wouldn't be good enough for you, of course, that maybe if the little guy has some more cash in his pocket, that he will buy more of your goods, thus evening out the balance a little bit... no, you can't bank on that... you need to ensure that you'll always have more, right? (By continuing to raise prices on your probably already over-priced goods-- hope that works out real well for ya)
Originally posted by Hopechest
reply to post by iwilliam
That's not what I'm saying at all.
What I am saying is that if you want to start a family but don't have a lot of money then you need to be prepared to accept the responsibility that you are going to struggle and will have to work harder to provide.
Don't demand the government put you at a level of other people who can afford it simply because its a decision you made.
Instead of demanding that you receive more pay for a minimum wage job why don't you go out and increase your skillset so you can move into a higher paying job?
"Well I can't do that because I have a family to raise", see the faulty logic here.
Originally posted by olaru12
reply to post by Catalyst317
If America truely was a capitalist country, the laws of supply and demand actually worked you might have a valid point; but speculation and wide spread insider trading and corruption, has so distorted the American economic system that only insiders can prosper.