Obama to Raise Minimum Wage for Federal Contractors - CNN

Wrabbit and darkbake,

I don't see this ending well.

We have to have livable wages for blue collar workers, those jobs in my opinion are what built this country.

They want us dirt poor and dependent.

darkbake
reply to post by ketsuko

 

My opinion on the matter is that way over in Europe, economists ran the numbers and figured out how to solve the wage problem in the U.S. - but I don't think European translates well into American. I could see this being a fairly overbearing step by Obama - especially because $10.00 just seems high.

I honestly see all sides of who is posting on this thread - like Beezer just mentioned, this could be a pretty major step towards Obama being impeached.

I also think that there are some serious problems facing the poor and middle-class right now, as Vic is saying -

edit on 28amTue, 28 Jan 2014 09:42:17 -0600kbamkAmerica/Chicago by darkbake because: (no reason given)

Economists in Europe?

You are kidding, right? Many of their economies have been stagnating just as badly as ours for far longer. Double digit unemployment ... the works.

If I were looking for a model to emulate, European social democracies would not be the ones I'd be studying.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


It won't end well, and I agree with that. The goal seems to be to squeeze and bleed business until they are all but shells of what they used to be. Business...small and large..employ people. We have record unemployment issues for scale and duration.

What is more important? Getting 100 million or more people back to work and at hours they can make ends meet with? ..or pumping the wages of the % still working somewhere, to make political hay and feel better? The masses sitting on benefits with no job are not benefited by it ...and employers will be that much more particular about hiring to the higher wages.

After all, labor/cost charts and ratios haven't changed and those numbers MUST balance at the end of the week, month and year. If they can't balance? Human red ink gets cut to make it balance.

Errr.. The devil is always in the details, but it'll be all sexy sounding to announce it at the big speech tonight.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


They will get more food stamps, raises in disability payments, utility bill payments, etc. to compensate for the price adjustments as the standards of living rise from the new minimum wage....and there will be more people receiving them. And to back that up with historical perspective.

$4.25-->$4.75 Oct 1, 1996
$4.75-->$5.15 Sep 1, 1997
Result: DotCom Bubble bust 1999-2001

$5.15-->$5.85 Jul 24, 2007
$5.85-->$6.55 Jul 24, 2008
$6.55-->$7.25 Jul 24, 2009
Result: Housing Bubble bust 2007-2012

Gold has been an inflated investment since the housing bubble burst. But then again the quantitate easing of low to no interest rate loans for banks has been some seriously easy money as well. One thing is for sure, there will be another bubble burst right after a minimum wage increase. And we are too close to the last "correction in the market" to weather the storm very well.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


My answer would be simple.

Stop relying on government to be a source of solutions.

Government claims to have all the answers. Government says we can't do "this" we can't do "that" because of party ideology.

I say, "Screw 'em".

We have to be a solution. Just us regular folks. Otherwise, we'll be just another cog in the wheel.

(Just my humble 2 cents)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Remember, the COTUS is a document of negative liberties that is flawed because it does not tell what your government must do for you, only what it can't do. This is the position of our so-called Constitutional scholar president, and if you don't agree with me, you must be forgetting that he is one of the smartest, most interesting elite intellectuals in the room.

I saw this and thought "Dictator". This isn't a huge thing by itself but the fact that hes saying he will do what he wants is very dictator like. If that threat stands then whats he going to do in the future? I myself would like to see every state in the union forced to raise minimum wage to 10.00 an hour but you cannot just force your will on the republic. That is the very essence of being a dictator. Anyhow just my 2 cents, this isn't huge but his threat and if he continues is huge and he needs to be removed from office.

Stormdancer777


They want us dirt poor and dependent.

And just like those that championed outsourcing as a means to make a fortune, these people will prove their shortsightedness when they figure out that without a tax base to pay for social programs that are handout for votes...no one will receive a vote anymore.

The old "We would love to help you but the mean old rich guys in the House won't give us the money" eventually wears thin while pandering to the starving.

Ahabstar
They will get more food stamps, raises in disability payments, utility bill payments, etc. to compensate for the price adjustments as the standards of living rise from the new minimum wage....and there will be more people receiving them. And to back that up with historical perspective.

That's actually not true. This year social security went up 1.3 percent and SNAP went down. Some years social security doesn't go up at all and it definitely hasn't matched inflation. I don't know anything about utility bill payments. All I know is SNAP went down. I keep hearing commercials on the AJ show that SNAP went up but it didn't. A law Bush signed expired which then led to the lowering of the amount paid out.

reply to post by Pimpintology


Except that you raise the minimum wage and everything else just gets more expensive as businesses adjust to compensate for their increased cost of labor.

Not only that but those who are making above the minimum get devalued wages because they don't raises, so they have less purchasing power to spend in the now more expensive economy.

And employers have less left to spend on new hires which are now more expensive, so less people get hired. There are less jobs.

I already explained this.

Artificially boosting the wage floor doesn't help anyone. It only provides a false sense that you're making more to the ones on the bottom.

reply to post by Stormdancer777

We have to have livable wages for blue collar workers, those jobs in my opinion are what built this country.

There is a difference between a blue collar worker and an employee at McDonalds.

Many blue collar workers have a skill in some trade, like carpentry, masonry, auto-mechanics, plumbing, electric...ect. Because they are skilled laborers, they tend to not make minimum wage. Minimum wage is set for unskilled workers--burger flippers, or any job that can be done where the only requirement for employment states that the employee must have a pulse.

If you are over the age of 25 and trying to support a family by working at McDonalds as anything other than a franchise owner, you have done something wrong. Instead of messing with the economy by demanding to move minimum wage up higher (which won't matter when the prices on everything else also increase), it would be better to get a skill in a trade and make yourself more useful.

Your output (how much you help the company earn) will be in equilibrium with your input(wage or salary).

The Davis Bacon law already applies to construction workers, painters, steelworkers, etc. working on government contracts. When you bid on a government contract, you are obligated to give your employees Davis Bacon wages. I do not know exactly what they are now, but I know they were well over ten dollars an hour when I was painting in the 1980's.

reply to post by darkbake

But there is a larger problem of why are only minimum wage jobs available?

I feel there are more than a handful of reasons for this. The most obvious to me is population. Realistically we can't give everyone a job. Another reason, and this has some opinion to it, is the way in which business owners and business policy makers conduct themselves. for example; The hiring process itself. In many corporate businesses they have a questionnaire as part of their application process. These questionnaires have questions which seek to determine ones moral and ethical preferences, a practice to be expected of anyone who is hiring another, but the manor in which these questions are asked is cryptic in a way that lets the reader know that there is a deeper implication to their answer than what may appear on the surface, while at the same time it's worded in a way that may suggest they want you to answer according to what you think they would want to hear.

We need real, effective methods of determining how and who we hire, not some back alley dark room way of weeding out "lazy" and "stupid" people. Think of how many people who do hiring who bring all their issues with them(not everyone i realize) to work and act rude to employees and customers, i wonder how many of them have overlooked an application or resume because of something like bad hand writing or spelling errors? sure these things make an application look nice but more often than not have almost no bearing on weather or not someone will be a good employee. Some small examples of things in the hiring process which NEED to change if everyday people expect to have reasonable accommodation towards the acquisition of a job.

Hm, all I have to say is this:

If you raise the minimum wage by say, $3.00/hr, then MY pay better be raised $3.00/hr. I could use some extra money!

This is why it won't work. Why shouldn't I be eligible to have my pay increased? Why work where I do when I can go get a job that carries no responsibilities whatsoever AND have a "livable wage"?

This will ultimately drive prices of everything upwards -- as corporations and companies will want to maintain the same profit margins.

ketsuko
Well a minimum wage increase isn't going to expand growth.

Really?
thinkprogress.org...

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2016 would increases wages by $35 billion, and the resulting increase in consumer spending would mean a GDP boost of $22.1 billion, which would support about 85,000 new jobs, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.

mediamatters.org...

The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that raising the minimum wage has no "discernible impact" on employment, and in fact, concluded that wage increases are more likely to result in more jobs rather than less.

A Fiscal Policy Institute study on 18 states that currently have higher minimum wages than the federal floor, reached the same conclusion, noting: "The simplistic introductory economics prediction that an increase in the minimum wage will result in job loss clearly is not supported by the actual job growth record." The study found that these states not only enjoy higher small business job growth than states with the standard federal wage, the "indicators of economic performance [in these states] were consistently better."

For example, after California increased their minimum wage from $4.75 to $5.65 in 1996, the state saw over 1 million jobs created over the next five years. After the state of New York raised its minimum wage in 2004, total state employment increased 3 percent.

ketsuko
It's taking even more money out of an employers' pocket and trying to force them to do something else with it then they might have in mind.

Like what? Building their 3rd or 4th summer home? Or maybe, contributing it to politicians who will make sure they don't have to offer contraceptive coverage in their employee healthcare plans? (freeing up even more money for other things they "may have in mind.")

ketsuko
It's also going to limit job growth by making existing employees that much more expensive, not even starting to talk about unions who negotiate their rates off minimum wage.

This one really blew me away! I participated in negotiating union contracts for over 25yrs. and never once have I ever seen any union negotiator utilize the current minimum wage for any basis of negotiations whatsoever! What an absolute load of crap!

In fact, quite the opposite is historically true. Minimum wage increases follow in the footsteps of higher wages negotiated by unions and not the other way around.

reply to post by MystikMushroom

This will ultimately drive prices of everything upwards -- as corporations and companies will want to maintain the same profit margins.

I don't think that concept we call inflation is taught anymore in school? At least the news and media sure play like it doesn't exist and can't play a factor ever again. (rolls eyes)

It's kinda sad, really...because we're denying the most basic foundation stuff in economics 101 like it can just not happen because we willed it to be that way. Yikes..... When McD's raises the burgers by 50% to compensate the much smaller hourly wage rise? See how folks feel about those SLIGHTLY larger checks going to buy things MEASURABLY more expensive within weeks or months of a major shift.

Oh goody... This should be fun, what with Gas and Utilities already breaking homes across the nation. Why not add another financial stressor. It's like a big big game of 'Tip the Waiter'. Eventually, we'll reach that 1 last coin for balance.

Federal contracts !

Means WE ARE PAYING MORE.

The income tax the government collects WILL BE MORE.

Between Employers SS contributions, income tax the Feds collect.

Means they don't see anything really.

Just another nail in the economic coffin.

reply to post by MystikMushroom


what paying job has "no responsibilities whatsoever?"

I don't get what it means by "federal contractors". Like others have said, when on a prevailing wage job, the workers get prevailing wage. Which is pretty much union wages.

Now I am a union sheet metal worker, if I work on a prevailing wage job my pay does not change. The non-union guys and girls on that job will see a pay increase. I can't see any trade making less than 10 an hour on a prevailing wage job today. Back in '85 I worked a prevailing wage job as a non union sheet metal worker. Pretty much just started in the trade so was given apprentice wage of 9.75. Way more than the 4.50 I think I was making. So 30 years later I doubt anybody gets less than 10 an hour.

And like others have said, If trying to raise a family on min wage, its not our fault.

I think there is 2 big problems in our society today.
First, people seem to think they "deserve" something. Like the fast food workers recently striking for 15 an hour. Fast food jobs were for high school students entering the work force, not designed to raise a family on, unless you moved into mgmt.

Second, Blue collar skilled trade jobs are if not looked down upon are certainly not pushed as a pathway to the middle class. Actually having to work and sweat and bleed and get burned (it happens) is so unthinkable to todays wannabe basketball stars and rap artists.
I don't just mean union jobs either. although I support them.

reply to post by tinner07


your absolutely right everyone should have to work for and earn their keep. I don't think that many of those protesters would disagree with you, but the difference is you think that working at McDonald's isn't hard work, and if you don't think that, than to me your words certainly imply it. You may not sweat or bleed too much, but you deffinatly get burned though.