The unaffordable higher minimum wage fallacy

Even worse than making minimum wage, depending on the country, is actually knowing how much your job is worth. I work for an "employer" that provides services to company B, which, on it's turn, provides services for one of the biggest companies in the world. My salary is something like this:

- Big company pays B company about €1600, which is something like $1793.
- Company B pays my employer €900, $1009
- My employer pays me anything between €640 and 760€, which is anything between $717 and $852

It's repulsing that half my pay is going to 2 companies that don't do anything other than treating us like human garbage.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

As another poster made the comment of if these are jobs for kids in school, then they should only operate in times where only kids can work that job. Something tells me that would never fly though, could be intuition, could be common sense...

a reply to: JameSimon

Welcome to korporate earth comrade, you will be sold by another company that owns another company that hates having to deal with staffing issues so they sell your labor to yet another company.

And people said the NWO was a myth...lol

Another thing to add. First off, I work in hospitals, one of the largest employment sectors in our nation now, and no one has gotten a 5% increase since 2007. Secondly, to all the "but I don't make minimum, why should they get an increase and not me" whiners and doomsayers.....don't worry about threats thAt don't exist. Everywhere I have lived where minimum is higher, all jobs up the ladder pay more. Conversely, I now live in Louisiana, one of the lowest paying areas in the country, and ALL jobs pay less up the ladder here. All the salaries are pegged off the minimum wage beginning, as it is now a race to the bottom.....so you would all get increases too.

a reply to: onequestion

This has been discussed and dealt with years ago.

CEO salary went from 30 x the lowest salary

To 450 x the lowest salary in the company.

Anybody see a pattern where money goes.

Greed pure greed.

a reply to: pexx421

Annual raises are almost non-existent in every sector, while profits soar, and productivity forcibly increases those in the "middle class" to remain stagnant. An average annual salary raise is usually 1-2% IF you are a top performer. Inflation rates are around 1.5% annually. So if you are a top performer in a middle class job, or career as the stubborn and ignorant call it (35k+ let's call it that), you can hope at best the minimal pay increase. At that stagnant increase rate it's only a matter of time until minimum wage catches up with you.

It's not only minimum wage that has felt the brute force of international corporations.

The worst part about this, and something that companies don't realize, is that an underpaid worker is an unhappy and not fully productive worker. More paycheck, more productivity

a reply to: burdman30ott6

actually, they were the targets of housewives and high school students from family who's husband's income needed a boost from time to time. before that, it was slaves and servants.

we're not allowed to have subclasses of humans anymore so well now the men are being dragged into those portions of the workforce also after being replaced by more competant women and it's blowing everything up in our faces..
what a shame!!!
just, but still a shame.

if it's such a crime to tell a business owner what to do with the profits they make by increasing the minimum wage to the point that is causes some of those drawing the social welfare benefits to become ineligible for them, then isn't it a bigger crime to forcibly tell those that are teetering on the edge of that great chasm of "earning too much to be eligible but not enough to live" to donate some of their money to keep that business' employees alive and functioning???

why is it that it's perfectly fine to think that those people hanging there barely making it can just adjust and make due with less than welfare gives out to the "poor" but the poor, poor businesses shouldn't be expected to adjust to the idea of paying a living wage???

When I was a teen, flipping burgers was a way to make some money to save up for a car, college, or a little spending money. Pretty much all the fast food joints were mostly staffed by teens. Thirty years later when I go into those same restaurants, instead of teens it is mostly barely literate older Hispanics who in all likelihood are trying to raise a family.

These jobs were never designed for people to be trying to raise a family on. The jobs served as a way for someone to gain some skill, demonstrate responsibility and dependability and move up to higher paying jobs. This is why turn over is so high. The vast majority of people recognize the jobs are temporary.

Forcing businesses to pay $15/hr or whatever the number is when the job may not produce at least that in value to the business just means that businesses will accelerate the replacement of those jobs where possible with technology. Sure, someone may be making the $15/hr, but there could be two or three others who are now making ZERO.

In addition, instead of teens being able to get on that first rung of the ladder, in many cases businesses will just opt to hire older more mature workers instead. So now those teens will find themselves with nothing to do. We see this in big city ghettos all over the US where there are simply no jobs for those who need them most because they are filled with older workers now. In the 80s, a lot of those teens would have been flipping burgers but now they are stuck hanging out on corners with nothing to do because those jobs are filled with the barely legal 35 year old immigrant from south of the border. So now those teens resort to crime, drugs, and other mischievous activities since they have nothing else to do with their time and ways to make a little spending money.

What about the small-time building contractor who works on a very narrow profit margin? The struggling repair shop owner who barely pays his bills and his employees' wages as it is? The mom and pop ranchers and farmers struggling against big ag and big cattle? Large corporations can absorb the cost, sure, but many of these small operations will literally be put out of business by a wage increase of this nature. I can promise you that these smaller businesses would hire less, and jobs would be eliminated. To keep things in context, I'm talking mostly about business owners who really aren't very far removed from the disadvantaged that a law like this would supposedly benefit. These people will be hurt the most by a law like this.

I guess they can go get fifteen dollar an hour burger flipping jobs (if they can find one), but that will not correct the "unethical corporations screwing the labor" problem that we're faced with here. In fact, in many ways this may make the problem worse by creating a situation where only the big fish in the business pool can afford to hire anyone. Big business tightens its stranglehold on the American People, Episode 69, brought to you by: (insert your least favorite corporation here).

a reply to: engineercutout

We see this in my industry. I work in mortgage finance and the government created all these very onerous regulations. The regulations are so bad, that you basically need a full time employee just to handle compliance lest you get slapped with massive fines if some bureaucrat finds out you didn't follow some rule. The big Too Big Too Fail banks can easily staff up whereas this is a huge burden for the many small companies in our industry.

This is no different. it winds up hurting the little guy who doesn't necessarily have the deep pockets to offest the increased costs.

While it is nice to assume every business is a huge multi-national corporation, the reality is that most businesses are just small mom & pop outfits who aren't necessarily living the highlife. Many have their entire networth invested into their companies and have made all kinds of sacrifices to keep the doors open. To assume that they can just double the cost of their labor without ill affects smacks of arrogance and pure ignorance.

As I've pointed out on numerous occasions, none of these people who push these policies will risk their own capital to start their own businesses and run them how they see fit. If it is so easy to pay people $15/hr or some mythical living wage, I want these people to start the freaking company and do it. Shut Up and put their money where their mouth is...

a reply to: engineercutout

I don't know why yall don't seem to get it. You are not listening I think. The cost, as always, is PASSED ALONG TO THE CONSUMER. Got that? At any rate, it's not like small mom and pop stores or farms can compete now. They are quickly growing extinct due to corporate price wars and lobbying, so you won't have to worry about them soon and it has nothing to do with how much they have to pay their labor. At any rate, what most of you fail to pick up is that we don't have a static minimum wage. We have a declining standard of those on minimum wage. If it had increased at the same rate as inflation it would now be around $19 an hour. Meaning that those on min now have half the purchasing power that their grandfather's did.

a reply to: Edumakated

I was a teen when the first burger king came into my city. Funny thing, seem to remember that it was open during school hours. Can't help but wonder, just who was working during those hours if all that was employed by them were teens looking for a little extra spending money... all those teens were in school that time of day.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

ya exactly, im agreeing with you in that post lol

a reply to: dawnstar

They completely rely on runaways and college kids

a reply to: onequestion

Well firstly they are a privately owned company, so they don't have to share how they are doing, nor do they have investors to keep happy.

So grocery store's usually run what is called the high/low game. Where they run the core grocery items at competitive prices and make their margin up on everything else.

Wegman's is a company that is a mix between a grocery store and a whole foods store.

Now Whole foods profit margins are 4.1% while a Wegman's is a (supposedly) 7.5%, and Walmart is a 2.9%.

Simply math says there is no way possible for them to have competitive prices, while running a very high wage, and make that much more money that Walmart per store. The margin's just are not there for Walmart. There has been plenty of studies when considering task load versus man hour required to keep a Walmart stocked, so it is important to compare similar business models.

There was a time when welfare was lower than minimum wage, 20-30 years ago is my guesstimate.

But because welfare rates have somewhat followed cost of living increases and minimum wages have not, welfare has now surpassed minimum wage.

When the minimum wage rate was first established it was based on the basic cost of living needs. Another words, it guaranteed that a person working a fulltime minimum wage job could keep a roof over their head and food on the table, albeit with little else... but the essentials were covered nonetheless.

But that's no longer the case because minimum wage has been stagnated for many years and therefore has deviated further and further from the cost of living increases as each year goes by.

It is now so far off kilter that anyone working a minimum wage job has to hold out their tin cup for government handouts to keep that roof over their heads. Had minimum wage rates (as well as all other wage rates) followed cost of living increase rates, we wouldn't have this problem.

It never should have been allowed to get to this point.

Without that minimum wage cost of living safety net, more and more middle class will be forking out more and more tax dollars to social programs to keep the economy afloat. If it keeps up like this, there will eventually come a point where the middle class are the poor living in squalor, and the poor are the half-naked beggars on the street waiting to die.

It's up to the peoples of any nation to ensure that the wage rates (all wage rates) stay on par with cost of living rates. If they don't, the house of cards come crashing down.

We are now starting to see the beginnings of those first few cards falling on our heads...

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
I don't have a lot of confidence in management, high-paid people or CEOS.

I'm CONSTANTLY having to explain to people several pay grades above me how to do something that should be a routine part of their jobs, as per their job description.

These people make 2-3 times per year what I make, and for some reason can't do the simplest of tasks. I have no idea how they got the jobs they have. No idea.

Yes, I have the same thing, and I now treat these people like the fools that they are.

And guess what, I am getting raises like crazy, and generally after I convinced my own boss I could yell at HIS bosses and not only get away with it, but restructure their ways of thinking, but now am suddenly taking over without even trying.

My conclusion: It is time for the nice GOOD GUYS, to DOMINATE and rip this system apart and rebuild it simultaneously, and even the highest scum traitors at the top will not be able to do a dam thing about it!

lol all the money loving wh*res in this thread will be sorry when your piece of paper cant protect you from an angry group of people ready for the end of the world. your attitude is why our planet societally is in such horrid shape. if you cant beat the scum join them. yes wall street is contributing so much to society it deserves its billions.
think about what you are saying. there is a limit to the excess and you will see it harder than anyone.
im thinking about the next life already I could care less what happens in this material world where we are merely being tested for the beyond. I will live life happy, happy to smell fresh air and to provide enough food and small comforts for myself. you can continue to lust after your mansion.
enjoy it while you can.

p.s. we have the technology to provide food and energy to the entire world and we don't need money but society loves to compete with each other over who gets the bigger section of grass. im surprised we've survived this long as a species with the way we behave toward each other