Do you believe in a living wage?

The minimum wage should be $0.00/hr, period.

 

That is not Liberals..that is Human nature.

 

I think that's why a "living wage" can never be forced on employers. What is a living wage? Is this living wage for a single person or a family of 6? Forcing a "living wage" on all of society would have to include all kinds of societal controls. Child limits? People need to learn to live within their means instead of trying to force the responsibility onto employers.

 

Are you advocating that everything be free?, or that you would work for free?
What makes something skilled in your opinion? that it pays well? Your idea would erase about 45% of what we consider skilled.

If my business depends on unskilled labor, what motivations would I have not to coerce someone to work for free, As I am assuming food stamps are not an option as well in your utopia.

You would make small towns slave towns like china does...is that what you want?

Remember how many skilled trades are now min wage...how much lower do you want to make them.

 

Wouldn't it be nice if nobody wanted for anything?

It just isn't practical. We lack motivation. To many of us have it too easy. We like easy. We love easy. We are addicted to easy.

I look at society today and it is easy for me to see why we have so many people making a sub standard living.
1. We have 2 generations raised with an increasing sense of entitlement.
2. We increasingly are willing to give up almost anything for convenience. Privacy and freedom take a backseat these days.

As long as we give in to entitlement and convenience we will never be motivated to put forth the effort.

I am reminded of this quote and i think it has relevance.

I love that quote, one of my favorite of all time. I have never been able to attribute it to a real person tho it was loosely tied to Anarchist Emma Goldman.

 

Utopia not. Capitalism yes.

Some people seek work as interns and are willing to work for $0.00/hr for the opportunity of gaining experience. Others are also willing to do some limited work for the experience. There is a lot of pro bono work too.

I doubt coercion would be much of an effective force in sourcing free labor, but, when there is a minimum wage of $0.00 then free-market capitalist forces would dictate through supply and demand the prevailing minimum wages in any given region of the country in any given economic conditions. It's impractical for the government, state or federal, to dictate minimum wages.

I don't think businesses are going to get much over on skilled trades or professionals. People should know their value in the market place as should business know the fair market value of the skills they require to run their businesses.

I'm advocating to remove government mandates from the wage equation...



There's probably more to it that that, but that's my initial thought on a $0.00 minimum wage.

 

No he is saying that a wage is an agreement between the person offering a job and the person seeking it. No one is forced to work for minimum wage but also no one is entitled to a job.

Who decides what a living wage is ? Does that mean you make enough to own a car or a house, have cable TV , have steak when you want it ? Its also not the job of your employer to support you

 

I believe in the liberal concept of natural rights, basic among these is the freedom to trade your goods and labor at whatever rate you can freely negotiate.

 

You're paying him to spend money?




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I do not believe in minimum or a living wage. Both are the antithesis of a solid education and hard work to get ahead. Having said that, I'd rather help people who are trying to improve their lives. Deadbeats and professional child raisers should be forced to get by on scraps, not live like kings who needn't lift a finger.

 

most of my concern goes to people with dependents...What you say about childless, able-bodied people is correct and no argument from me.

The living wage argument only holds water in my opinion when trying to support a Family, and what we as a nation want.

 

You have no business having a family if your making minimum wage . Pay attention in school and learn a skill. There is still big money in working with your hands

 

Appreciate the interaction ...

If I am an employer, why would I hire someone full time for a "mostly useless activity"? I don't think I would do that. I think I would hire a full time employee because his labor was absolutely necessary to the conduct of my business. Assuming this person is an adult, and the work he does is absolutely necessary to my business, shouldn't that person be able to minimally sustain himself?

The alternative is the welfare state, and "the state" is you and me. It is in your state income tax bill, sales taxes, and in your federal income tax bill.

Even though I am conservative on most things, I have to admit that I find it disturbing that I must help sustain low-income people in an era when corporate profits are very high, and the top people are paid tens of millions of dollars annually. The top 100 CEOs in this country earn an aggregated $3 billion, an average of $30 million annually. So tell me again why it is that I should have to pay taxes to sustain a low-income worker. Last year I paid over $28,000 in state and federal income taxes (about $2300 a month). Some of that went to sustain low-income people.

I don't hate successful people. I don't even envy them. I am happy right where I'm at. I am not a socialist. I am really quite conservative. But I have two eyes, and I can see when something is out of whack. Why is it that I have to pay $2300/month of my wife's and my income, some of which that helps sustain others, when the CEOs are making $30 million annually? How many of their employees am I helping to sustain?

And so I ask the question. Why shouldn't someone who works hard full time be able to sustain himself, and why should they make so little that the rest of us have to sustain them?

 

Lets find out the monitary reason then Walmart has greeters then...you could be right....

"Walmart Greeter
Walmart Greeter Job Description & Interview

Job Description and Duties
Walmart greeters meet customers at store entrances. Greeters at Walmart may assist customers with cart selection, offer coupons, or simply welcome people to the store. Walmart greeters may direct customers to specific areas of the store or note a return a customer brings back. Greeters with Walmart may need to perform other assigned duties, according to shift and location. Walmart greeters may clean store entryways, departments, or even restrooms if assigned such a task from a managing supervisor. Greeters at Walmart may also need to identify customers for security purposes.

Salary and Compensation
Employment benefits and competitive salary options await qualified Walmart greeters. Greeters with Walmart may receive a variety of job benefits. Eligible Walmart greeters may take advantage of several financial work benefits, such as paid vacation days or 401(k) retirement program, and health-related work benefits, such as vision, dental, medical, and life insurance plans. Starting pay for a Walmart greeter often falls near minimum wage. Walmart greeters may earn more with experience and more time served with the department store chain."

Sounds like they are worth their weight in gold as theft prevention.

theft prevention is yes...paying someone to spend money, as are security guards whom guard money..imagine how much is it worth to pay someone to guard $million..min wage?

I am deviating.

 

To anybody advocating zero minimum wage, do you really think markets could ever be elastic enough for that while ensuring a certain quality of life for a fulltime worker?

To me, 0/hr seems as arbitrary as any other threshhold; heck, why not make it -5/hr? Make people pay to get entry-level experience, that way you can have only the best applicants...

I would say abolish the minimum wage if we established a Negative Income Flat Tax.

But otherwise, just peg it to CPI. Rising wagefloors don't inflate all products/wages in the same proportions.
Also, don't discount the effects increased consumption would have on economic competition.

 

I don't think having a family has taky backys.

 

Yeah, so I'm not very knowledgable about what the living wage concept is all about. It sounds like a leftist concept to mandate wages across the board. I don't think we live in a one size fits all country. People should be accountable for living within their means. They can start by finishing high school, then get a job, then they might be ready to marry and start a family. Those three things alone would reduce families living in poverty by 95% (or so I read somewhere recently)

So, that and that minimum wage is based on supply and demand, skills, experience, location, and other factors that the government simply cannot and should not attempt in any way to be involved.

I can see society providing assistance for the truly needy, but not smart phones, cable tv, and high end sneakers for a brood of 8 children living in a 1-parent household and 8 different men are mooching off of one woman who's collecting a government check on your tax-paying dime... </cynical>

I'm not even sure I can ascribe to a concept of a living wage. If my first job won't by my lady a fat turkey for thanksgiving and my son a new pair of converse sneakers so he doesn't have to walk to school 5 miles in the snow then I'll get a second job mopping floors or shoveling manure so I can afford it.

 

Well, when working people cannot sustain themselves for the necessities - like shelter, food, and medical care - then we taxpayers sustain them.

 

The same reason someone dog paddling hard, full time may drown—what he's accomplishing isn't enough. I'd suggest both people do something different.

That Wall-mart greeter... that person greeting full time, do you honestly believe they are necessary to conducting business? If you make it a requirement that the employer either pay him a living wage or nothing at all, you'll get the answer. I just don't think it's the one you want.

I appreciate the conversation too. This is an important topic for the nation. It's expensive to live here and businesses that work out of the states are facing some ugly realities. I'm not sure there are easy answers.



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I don't believe in a living wage.

We already have a solution. Pay workers minimum wage if they don't like it fire them all and hire foreign workers to work at the lower rates.

People can get by by living with their parents until they die. Then they can live off of the inheritance until they're old enough to retire and get SSI and Social Security.

This strategy is going to work as long as there are babyboomer parents to pass on an inheritance. It won't start collapsing the system until the millennials die and don't leave an inheritance to their children because they were too poor and had no assets after the Medicaid confiscation. But who cares about tomorrow all that matters is today's bottom line.

 

lol.

"Living wage" is a measure of what the "minimum wage" should be.

That is, should the minimum wage be below Living Wage? If so, it implies government support for the worker, as we don't just let people die.

And, your assumptions about inheritance and SS seem unlikely, too.


I see living wage as important, because it means people can support themselves, as opposed to support by my taxes. And, disposable income is good for the economy.

Finally, getting people off support is good in that it becomes important for those on support to find ways to maximize support income as much as finding ways to maximize income from work.

 

You are deviating. Pretty sure this has nothing to do with your original point. And I'm fairly certain there are more cost effective ways to deter theft, which brings us back to having a hard time justifying the difference between those options and a living wage to have an octogenarian watch dog.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but economies are people exchanging value. Bill may put a chair into the economy or his service driving a bus, then use his credit for that to take out a quart of milk or Sam's service preparing his taxes. If you short change the economy by taking the credit Bill got away from him and giving it to Sam, so Sam can ask for more from Bill you're not growing that economy. You're cheating it.

You've diminished the economy, the exchange of value. Instead Bill is just working to give Sam what he wants, at no benefit to himself. That's not an economy. Sam making Bill to do more things isn't Sam serving Bill. It's Bill providing charity.




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OK, so let's say we pay the WalMart greeter the MW, and that greeter also qualifies for food stamps, Medicaid for himself and his family, and maybe subsidized housing for himself and his kids. You and I pay for that.

Meanwhile, Mr Walmart is earning tens of millions of dollars a year. If we are being billed by our government to help sustain that WalMart greeter, aren't we, in effect, paying Mr WalMart? This is what I find disturbing.

I think my preference would be that Mr WalMart takes care of his employee and that I don't get billed by the government to sustain Mr WalMart's employee.

 

Why does Mr. Walmart earning money mean he should pay for the charity you want to provide?

Our sustaining a guy who get's additional money by trading with Mr. Walmart is no more paying Mr. Walmart than food stamps are paying you to give a dollar to the guy who wipes your windows at the stop light.




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Correct. It has everything to do with value.

As an employer forced to increase wages beyond value I would be have to reevaluate the duties my employees perform. I would then have a bad news/good news meeting with my employees. Bad news - their current positions have been eliminated. Good news - due to their current history and experience with the company they will have the upper hand in applying for the new positions which will have redefined duties as well as increased pay.