Fast-food workers strike nationwide in protest against wages

Seriously?

That depends on where you live. Are you honestly going to suggest that a short order cook in New York City should be making the same "livable wage" as one in Monkey's Eyebrow Kentucky, population 250?

Do you have any idea what rent is in New York City?

 

You know what? If you can't afford the rent in NYC , MOVE

You aren't entitled to make enough to live in whatever lifestyle you wish. Where do we draw the line? Oh I know how about at common sense?

Minimum wage should be enough to keep a single full time employee off the welfare rolls and nothing more. How you spend that money is up to you.

 

A fast-food business could apply barcodes to all packaging in which the customer places his order via computer, the food is prepared, the customer picks up his items, then scans those items and pays...exactly like self-check out at Home Depot and grocery stores, etc.

Labor can only hold hostage business up to a point where the business realizes it's more advantageous to mechanize than deal with labor issues...

 

course then who is gonna serve the fast food, those that can afford the rent.... get real

I believe welfare should augment min wage if it doesn't produce a living wage... it's the price we pay for cheap stuff

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Is a puffin a bird?

 

is tuna a fish?

 

May Daddy always used to say...be careful what you wish for, sometimes you get it.

 

If unions were non-profit, administered by volunteers, I would have a little more interest in them and their motives...

 

Simple, if those who own the fast food places want such places there, they will pay enough to attract workers.
A federal minimum wage of $9.27 an hour certainly doesn't preclude NYC from having their own higher minimum. It merely means they MUST pay at least the federal minimum.

No need to keep confusing the issue.

 

They won't be willing to work so cheap for long, though, if they do gain citizenship.

 

Thanks for making the case against a federal minimum wage.

 

the fed min is just the min, no one says for a given area the min should not be more, many states have a higher min wage then the fed

it's sad that some see people being under paid in one area means it should be ok to under pay someone in another area
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Government sustains a drop-out factory public education system.

Government allows tens of millions of Americans and thousands of square miles to become crime-infested ghettos.

Government IMO is adversarial to industry.

So we have a government which would rather spend trillion$ on stupid wars and fighting and Homeland security and foreign aid, etc. when at home our nation is crumbling...turning to waste...dragging millions of Americans down the drain and forgotten.

When I was a young man few of us went on to college and established solid professional careers...as a percentage of the working population. Back then I thought as time passed, and the nation grew and found economic success, that this percentage would continue to grow and grow...after all, this is the USA where we are supposed to do things better than anyone else. We had spent our treasury and 1/2 a million lives in WWII and happy days were here again and let the good times roll the sky was the limit...all a person needed to do was work hard, stay out of trouble, get some education, and be wise with our money. It sure didn't take long for everything to turn to (*)(*)(*)(*)...

 

He made no such case.

IF there were no federal minimum wage, some states would no doubt set theirs at $5 an hour LOL , we certainly don't want that, so we need a federal minimum wage.

That is BEYOND dispute. The only real argument is, where should it be set?

The logical answer is $9.27 an hour.

 

"Government sustains a drop-out factory public education system."

Taxcutter says:
I'd characterize it as an employee/retiree benefits administrator with a sideline of daycare.



"Government IMO is adversarial to industry."

Taxcutter says:
100% agreed.

 

Indeed how about some common sense. If businesses in New York want short order cooks they will have to pay them more or they will move. And if they move they will not be anyone to do those jobs. The what will happen, they will pay better or close their doors.

The wages most of these companies pay make you eligible for government subsidies, not get you off of them.

 

True; they just drop oil, ball bearings, pieces of metal slivers, animal feces and whatever else humans fail to catch onto your food.

 

Why stop at $15/hr...lets do $25

 

I would rather the government stay out of it, unfortunately at this point, there is nothing rational about this country's economy. The government offers tax breaks to companies that create massive numbers of employees who need the government subsidies to survive on the insufficient wages they receive.

Honest to gawd Ace how is this viscous cycle rational?

 

If the labor creates the profits that would allow it, why not. Would it honestly be a travesty if people who worked for a living made a realistic wage that is comparable to the economic environment they exist in?

 

they can do that now. They can get another job, or get two jobs. Its been happening like this for decades.

 

The minimum wage in Oklahoma is $2.00 per hour.

 

There's nothing rational about it, but that's certainly not a good reason to continue acting irrationally in my opinion.

 

First off, I'm always amused at the concept of the "middle class is shrinking"...... um..... no..... That would be what is known as "mathematically impossible".

Just go back to high school math, and you can figure that one out. (apologies to those publicly education and were not taught)

Second, all money wants to keep inflation down. Inflation harms ..... *EVERYONE*.... not just the rich. And in fact, the Rich are the least harmed. If I own land, and inflation hits, that land will go up in value relative to the inflation of the currency. I won't gain much, but won't lose much either.

The people who are really harmed by inflation, are those with less money, and are therefore less able to hedge against inflation. For example, people who have all their money wrapped up in CDs, will be ruined by inflation. Who generally has CDs? Rich people? No they have land and overseas investments and so on. It's normally the lower and middle class that has CDs.

Further, yes the median wages fell, but that is generally because the upper wages fell. The number of high paid investment bankers dropped because the sub-prime mortgage market crashed. When you cut off any significant number of the highest paid people, that pushes down the median.

Now that isn't to say that wages did not fall.... they did. That's what happens in a recession. And by the way.... that's what *should* happen.

A recession, is basically an economic reset. When a reset happens, the value of production falls. When the value of production falls, wages have to fall to.

Why? Because if your company has less money because of fewer products selling, then you have to either cut expenses, or go out of business. So wages must fall, so that the business can get back onto level economic ground. Then once stable again, you can start building up the business again.

The problem is, the left in an attempt to prevent the natural economic system from resetting, has prevented it. By creating dis-incentives for production, paying people to not work, and preventing homes from being foreclosed on, all of this has dragged out the reset process, dragging out the pain for a longer period of time.

Just like Hoover and FDR during the great recession. FDR pushed business to not cut wages. As a result, they instead didn't hire people. Result was that the recession lasted a decade.

 

No it hasn't. Decades ago a single household (two adults and 2 1/2 kids) could survive on a single income. Many of those households were financed by ditch diggers, farmers, gas station attendants, the clerk at the 5 & dime, and even the cook at A & W. Now a household needs 4-5 jobs to live with the same comfort society insists is the norm. Housing in those days barely took a quarter of the average families income (with one bread winner) and today it's over half (with both parents working numerous jobs) even with two people taking home the bacon.

At one time (decades ago) only 3% of the people who worked worked at minimum wage jobs. That's because most jobs that still exist today were not typically minimum wage positions. Today 8% of the working class/working poor hold minimum wage positions (basically because there are little choices), just over half are under the age of 25 (which means almost half or more than 40% are over 25, and over a 1/4 million of them hold at least one degree. Yes they are college graduates working minimum wage jobs. Getting an education did little or nothing for them in this economic environment. But hey more and more are just giving up and becoming dependents of the tax payer, so obviously it is more important to have huge numbers of the population on the government dole than to have jobs that pay realistic wages. Right?