Do you believe in a living wage?

At my Chevron station I pay at the pump and pump my own gas. That guy isn't as necessary as you seem to think. And even if he was, if you told Chevron they absolutely could not hire him, they'd change their procedures so as to still make money.

If Chevron Inc. needed him that badly, this law wouldn't be needed. He could simply stop working until they paid him what he wanted. That he doesn't demonstrates he is not essential.

And I get that you don't want to sustain full time workers, no matter what they do. Neither do I. Neither does Mr. Walton. So if your problem is people with full time jobs getting welfare, why not just stop that? Why take it to the next level of making Mr. Walton responsible for something you don't want to be responsible for?

You can label the idea conservative if you like, my comments are not based on it's label.



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Are you ok with an employer paying so little that the taxpayer must subsidize the wage the employer pays so the employee can get by?

 

I'm not ok with the employee doing so little that the taxpayer must subsidize his wage so the employee can get by. If he can get something from an employer to reduce that... seems like a good start.




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Before the Democrats went to the far left and began forcing me further and further to the right, I was firmly in the moderate camp. If someone is working a full 40 hours a week then yes, I believe in a living wage.

 

So, you're volunteering to pay it?



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It seems to me like you are putting forth the notion that an employer hiring for a minimum wage position automatically becomes responsible for that persons entire financial well being. I find that belief utterly preposterous. If an unskilled person requires government assistance, the employer that is paying that unskilled person is lessening the burden on government, not increasing that burden.

The truth is, a single person could probably scrape by on minimum wage if they were willing to work 60 or 80 hours, which very likely would require working at a couple different places. If its someone raising a family, their increased need in no way makes their work worthy of more money. Every individual has very different financial needs.The minimum wage employer is NOT responsible for the over all financial well being of the person, regardless of their individual circumstances.

 

Yeah, I used to think the same thing. But ...

If Peter works full time and is paid just enough to live in a small studio apartment, feed himself, and have medical care, then Paul doesn't get a bill from the government telling him to pay for Peter's things.

Also, it would be bad business to hire people you don't need, wouldn't it? So if I am the employer, nobody is getting hired that I don't need, regardless of how little I pay them. I either need them or I don't. If I need 10 employees to get the work done, I don't hire 11. I also don't hire 5. I hire exactly how many I absolutely need, and I have a business plan that supports that expense. For this reason, I don't necessarily see a large drop in employment when employees make more money. These minimum wage jobs may not require much skill, but they are necessary.

I often hear this argument that higher costs are just passed on to the consumer. That is true to some extent. But the price of things is limited by what the market will bear. The law of supply and demand kicks in. This law is why Nike can sell a pair of sneakers for $150 because the demand will support that price. But they can't sell them for $350. People could scrounge up $350 for the shoes, but they simply won't do it. So the demand trails off until the shoes are back down to $150, and they start selling again.

The demand for products is a limiting factor in the price of things. And remember, what I'm really talking about is replacing welfare with income of an equal value. I could see making the health insurance be a part of that compensation, so as to insure that that is what the money is spent on, and it is not squandered. So these subsistence level people are not going to be buying any more than they already do. People who are already self-sufficient are not going to be buying more products than they already do except for the amount of tax savings the lack of welfare gives them (perhaps a little bump in their income). So, you see, the demand for products would not rise dramatically. And without a rise in demand, prices cannot rise dramatically, or else people will just not buy the product.

I think this would be good for society. Society would be telling people, "Go to work. You will get by on your own if you work hard and if you are frugal. But we will not just support you anymore. Work for it."

 

I'm not "advocating" anything. I simply disagree with your opinion. I think many choices to become a parent or to not become a parent are made for selfish reasons.....either "I want a child" or "I don't want a child", with little thought given to the child itself. It is not for me to judge the choice to continue or not continue the pregnancy.....but what I WILL judge is making either choice and not funding it on a personal or familial level. It is NO one else's responsibility to pay for your child OR your abortion.....and to those who say "what about the children, it's not their fault", I would say that if you really cared about children, you wouldn't fund inadequate parenting.....which in my opinion includes the inability to take of a child's basic needs of food, shelter, medical care, and attention without other people's money. I would rather pay for orphanages or adoption agencies than condemn children to be raised by those who think it's a great idea to have them when they can't afford them, or worse.

 

Sure it does. If you have a baby and you can't afford to adequately feed, shelter, and provide medical care for it using your own income, the child should be taken away from you due to neglect. I will support my tax dollars going to adoption or orphanages, because you can bet that once people understand their children will be removed for said reasons, this behavior of bearing children you can't afford will dramatically decrease.

 

It means a shift to service industries rather than producing goods and/or high rates of production. However, foreign manufacturing companies have huge labor pools.

 

Haven't read the entire thread, so if this has been said it needs to be said again...

typically, the same people who pander to mandated "living wages" support Sanctuary Cities, amnesty, DREAM Acts, and all sorts of other 'One World' policies that exacerbate the entry level labor supply glut.

it's as if they don't understand the most basic and easily understood law of economics, Supply and Demand.

 

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted it. In my state (one of the few) they still pump your gas for you by law. Bad example, maybe.

He's essential to minding the store, yet no doubt, my health insurance cost is higher because I'm paying for his. He may very well qualify for food stamps, raising my tax bill. I'll give him credit for working, but I am paying to help sustain him. I am also supporting the governmental bureaucracy that funnels my money back to him. Meanwhile, Chevron makes billions in profit. So who am I really supporting? The answer to that is disturbing to me.

I don't want them to stop getting welfare because I am not a heartless b******. But I am willing to consider that there might be a better way to achieve the same ends.

As for Mr Walton, I congratulate him for achieving the ultimate American dream. He is a billionaire many times over. But the profitability of his business convinces me that I should not have to support the employees that he relies on to make him so successful. Because when I do support them, I am, in effect, supporting Mr Walton's personal billions. And I just cannot make sense of that. There is just something intrinsically wrong when the owner is a billionaire, and the taxpayers are sustaining his employees for the basic necessities of life.​

 

I am far from anything close to a liberal. In fact, I don't even think what I am talking about here is a liberal concept. It wasn't long ago in this country (a few generations) that nobody worked for less than what would sustain them because there was no other help. You couldn't offer a job that wouldn't minimally sustain the worker because they simply wouldn't take it. Without the ability to shelter and eat and clothe yourself, you die. If a job didn't provide for the basic necessities, there was no use in offering it, and there was no point in taking it. Back in the day, one didn't get rich on a living wage, but one didn't die either. I don't see why this should be thought of as some radical liberal concept.

Cheers!

 

Right, and you should patriotically starve to death if you can't make that much. After all, all employers are totally fair and constitutionally incapable of paying any employee less than they deserve, and all employees are completely able to get any job they want, anywhere, anytime, so it's for no other reason than total laziness that everyone isn't as rich as Trump

Why aren't YOU President with a trophy wife? Indolent product of cultural Marxist decadence.

 

You feel for these folks and want someone to take care of them—I get that. I just don't see the connection between Mr. Walton hiring them to do a job and that making him responsible for the charity you want them to have. Neither does Mr. Walton.

That's why the Walton's of this world are increasingly phasing those people out of their business models. You believe that Mr. Walton has no choice but to accept ever increasing responsibility for the lives of all these people, no matter how much of it we pile on him, because he can't function without them. Increasingly, Walton is demonstrating he can.

And Walton's dropping those people back in your lap, now without even the meager jobs he once provided, is no more heartless than your dropping them in his.



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Out of curiosity. Anyone here know how much walmart employees actually make? Its far more than I would pay for that level of skill and attotude. I'm not sure if its the same in every area or if its dependent on the cost of living. But here a new cashier starts off at eleven an hour.

To compare. A welder at Case starts out at fifteen an hour. That is for a semi skilled position. A casheer at the largest car dealer in Iowa starts out at nine fifty.

 

But all those things are happening now.

Maybe what we need to do is instead of a capitalist or socialist economy, we need a consumer economy. Give every American a job, with something useful to do. there's certainly enough wealth in the country to do it.

The thing is, you let the 1% cheat the "unskilled" labor, it's only a matter of time before they start cheating the "skilled" labor, too.

 

NOt really. In fact, what they are finding is that automation doesn't really work. The local walmarts up here are getting rid of the self-serve cashiers because too many people were ripping them off.

Here's the thing. There is plenty of work to be done. We could take the money being spent on Food Stamps and Section 8 and make them into wages.

For instance, if you had a system of national service for young people, pay them all the equivlent of what an E-1 makes in the military doing various community and public service for two years, that would dry up the labor pool enough to ensure full employment, and young people would get a good understanding of full time work.

Instead, our brilliant system is to shuffle them right into college, which most of them don't need and put them in debt for the rest of their lives for degrees that are becoming increasingly meaningless.

"Liberal Arts Major- would you like fries with that?"

 

Fair enough. I would however be more interested in a median age, I think there are a lot of retirees supplementing retirement with low paying, low pressure jobs. A 70 year old working part time to kill boredom skews that number. We do have a problem and I don't know the solution either. If the bottom wage paid was suddenly 25 an hour, it will do either of two things. Cause rampant inflation or eliminate many jobs. Someone making 25/hr would still be on the bottom rung and chasing purchasing power that just skyrocketed. At the end of the day, they'll be no better off.

 

The answer is actually pretty simple. But fewin government want to talk about it and none want to hear it because it does not garner votes.

Stop subsidizing mediocrity and get the gov as far away from the market as possible.

 

Government social programs subsidize low wage employment. They enable companies to pay these low wages because the employees get their basic needs met by government

 

No, employers would be forced to pay a wage not subsidized by the government

 

19th century America.

 

People now won't do farm labor because of wages being so low and the work so hard. If all low wage employers had to pay a wage commensurate with what it actually cost to live in order to get employees the problem would be solved and taxes would be lower for all working Americans