Minimum Wage

Nonsense. You stated that there was no need to look at the case in point.

Now, you're merely suggesting that there is some possibility that more help might be given than actually required.

But, that's total bs.

 

Big Monty Python fan.

Unfortunately the government has become the people's union, but if business wants to use the big gov for their interests it's a predictable backlash from the people who work for them. Ideally the BG shouldn't be engaged with such activities, but ideal societies are a rabbit hole of fantasy.

Don't expect the federal minimum to go to $15.00, maybe in 2043. Considering inflation, the federal minimum peaked in 1968, and hasn't kept up since. The expansion of credit only seems to be creating more inflation, but the large majority of people are losing their buying power, and there will be a new wave of people hit hard by a future recession.

People should be allowed to ask for better pay, and $15.00 seems to be the figure they're looking at. Likely won't go through with the fed, but maybe the job market will adjust to what people are asking.

 

In fact US automakers are making cars in mexico for resale in the US market which puts Americans out of work

But there is also the issue of chinese made parts imported to mexico for cars bound for the US

And American automakers building cars in china instead of exporting them from America

American workers are the losers in all these globalist schemes

 

we really just need a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage and unemployment compensation for simply being unemployed. That is a capital and working solution.

 

It would be very attractive for the people who prefer not to be employed or dislike being productive, that is for sure. The quantity of those people in our society has grown to the point that they can openly advocate and demand such things, whereas 50 years ago asking to be carried would be something deeply shameful and would cost you the respect of all the honorable people in your community. Such people now call this "progress".

It would also be disastrous for those forced to pay the bills, and ultimately- to the economic survival of the nation. That IS NOT progress. It's stupidity.

Think of minimum wage in an alternate form- minimum price, same conditions . If we are going to guarantee a wage when there is no guarantee it will have value, then we should also eliminate product guarantees. If you discover your new car won't do more than 40 MPH, or dies a week later- you made a mistake, bought the wrong car. You can fire it (sell it) but you aren't getting back what you paid for it, and the dealer is not responsible for what happened last week... Just like the productivity of an employee doesn't like to work.

If you can't reverse the conditions of any kind of protective arrangement and find they are good for both sides, you have a pretty poor deal- not a fair deal.
Guaranteed wage? Fine. If it goes right along with guaranteed productivity, or earning of that wage, it's a fair deal.

 

It depends upon how thinks about a min wage. Some of us think about it in a different manner completely. We think about it in the manner that the old mom and pops, locally owned businesses thought about wages. They would have never paid less to an employee(unless a teenager) than it took for that person to survive on, even if not very well. But at least they paid enough for a worker to survive. Perhaps because they were infected and affected by a moral compass? I dunno, but I just know that once upon a time these locally owned businesses paid enough for their neighbors to live on, even if not very well. And if you did not have some people that did not care if they paid enough, to live on, you would never have seen a need for a min wage. And given that just inflation has destroyed the min wage, working for a min wage today is not the same as working for that wage in 1969. In fact, min wage would be close to 20 bucks an hour, some have said, if only adjusted up for inflation. So min wage is a joke, just given that fact.

Let's look at it differently, which may be a new idea. If a business has to pay such low wages, that their employees cannot survive on them, without welfare, without you and I basically subsidizing those wages, do we even need a business to offer what is being offered by poverty wages? I say NO. And then if we actually do need these services, and there is a demand for them, then wages will rise, and people will be paid enough to survive on, without welfare, but only if society wants those services. And if not? Then we don't have poverty wages, period. You would have what our local businesses did, before the advent of the walmart business model that relies upon taxpayers to max out their profits, due to their working poor wages, requiring welfare in order for these people to survive.

So there is just more than you perspective when it comes to wages and capitalism. Your perspective creates businesses that rely on taxpayers to subsidize their poverty wages, in order to max out their own income and profits. It involves parasites, with the parasites being those businesses.

I say this as a retired business owner, small manufacturing serving the construction industry. I refused to pay working poor wages while all of my much richer competitors never saw a need for it. So, I did not pay industry averages in this sector that I was in.. Which only meant I could not be as rich as my competitors. But my employees made living wages. A trade off, that is reality in particular sectors. At the end of the day, it did affect my degree of wealth. But it also affected the living standards of my employees. This is reality whether one likes it or not.

 

Minimum wage promotes immigration.

When you have a minimum wage much higher than another country's, workers are attracted.

A glut in the workforce is not accompanied by a reduction in wages, so they don't ever stop coming.

And this produces wage compression.
Wages don't really need to go above minimum wage any more.
Because you can get an immigrant to do it for that wage.

So minimum wage has become, normal wage.

 

Building Roads - Infrastructure - Police - Military - Healthcare and so on.

 

Thank you for your support of a form of full employment of capital resources in our First World economy.

 

I have a long business career, founding/owning 7 companies over 50 years, several of which were involved in construction services or materials. Generally, I found that the minimum wage workers were the poorest value per dollar, and I avoided hiring them unless the situation was an entry level for training someone with no experience, or short term crude labor. IF that person was to stay with us, I expected them to learn and increase their value, and I was careful to recognize that. One woman I hired (usually more reliable than men anyway) had an accounting degree and had been looking for a teaching position, without success. I hired her as a book keeper. She proved to not only be very good at that but was one of those people who used her time very well, helping anytime she saw she could. I gave her four raises in the first year, and apologized to her for it not being more, because we couldn't afford it- but that she was worth it. I find that most owners (more than managers, probably) recognize that such people are exactly what you need on your team- but of course, they are hard to find. These are the people your competitors will come in and buy away from you- they are in demand. Anyone with this kind of attitude that starts as a minimum wage earner is soon better paid, or moving to a better job.

One thing you can't do is put yourself in a position of losing money or treading water to support someone with a wage level they aren't earning; that invariably kills the company. Somehow, many employees don't understand that. One example was a crew leader I had who was laying flooring in a major complex. He was very good, most of the time. I checked on the job one day and the crew had laid 12,000 sq ft of tile in one of the stores- 90 degrees off the pattern in the blueprint. When I asked him how this happened, he showed me the print on a work table, and pointed out the pattern matched. I pointed out that the print was turned sideways. The job lost money because of that. However, our next job did very well- and he asked why he wasn't getting a bonus, because he had just made us such a good profit. So I asked, you want a bonus when things go well. How about when they don't, like the last job? He pointed out that the job just finished profited because of his skill. However, the one that lost money was due to bad management, not his fault....

Generally every employer has been an employee and understands the position. However few employees have been employers, and are blissfully unaware of the complexities of keeping a company solvent and being able to fund payday on time, 52 times a year. This lack of understanding makes it very difficult to have a rational discussion with an employee who thinks your business is a social service agency whose first priority is to support him.

It's a two-way street. I'm thankful for those who understand that, intolerant of those who don't.

 

Daniel- I think there is a good job for every good man out there. People are the real resource- if they choose to be. I could think up several ways to start successful businesses right now, the economy offers so many opportunities. There are always challenges, of course.

Money? If what I had wasn't enough, I know how to raise it.
Facilities? I can find and rent, or build.
Same with equipment.
Of all the things that enter into such an undertaking- the most volatile factor is the people. Not the quantity of people who would take jobs- but the quality and performance. Can you find enough people with the right stuff to make the business fly?
Number one challenge. Not finding people- finding the right people.
They don't even have to be skilled in many cases- but they do have to be willing to learn, to show up on time, to know how to work and apply themselves, to help the company grow.
Such people will always have the ability to support themselves well.

Full employment, as a concept, means hiring people who do no bring those things to the table, and paying them as if they did. AKA, welfare.

 

That is simply, too much right wing fantasy to indulge in modern times. Capitalism has a "natural" rate of unemployment merely for the benefit of the capital bottom line.

 

Your "how we learn about Trump" analogy just doesn't work. We have MASSIVE input from Trump. No such reliable information is consistently published by those in trouble.

In the end, there absolutely does need to be attention paid to each individual needing help in order to assess whether help is even warranted, and if it is, what the most appropriate direction should be.

Then, you make wild and totally unsupported statements about what is needed!!

American needs more than wild assumptions.

 

It would be horrible. The inflation based on labor costs would kill the economy. The minimum wage needs to be increased (at the risk of unemploying people who aren't productive enough to be paid a higher wage) to about $11 an hour, which in constant 2017 dollars is about what it was at it's high point.

 

Really? That's odd...

The right wing has improved every economic number the left wing left.

It's not everybody that doesn't take the right wing seriously. It's just the people that don't like American prosperity.

 

The world has caught up with us in terms of manufacturing.

Trying to make laws that say we can't import something if it was manufactured outside the US is a hopeless attempt to defeat free market capitalism.

We have Walmart, because there are people who need low cost goods. We're not going to shut their doors.

The real issue here is that we need to start looking at this like it is an actual competition - because that's what capitalism IS!

We need to look ahead, NOT behind, to find ways we can win.

No matter what Trump hats say, we're not going to roll back the clock. Our economic position is founded on our competitiveness. We're not particularly competitive in manufacturing anymore.

US manufacturing knows that. When US Steel built its new plant here they designed it so that they only needed to hire 1/10th of the number of employees to make the same amount of steel. They did that by hiring people who know how to design, install and operate automated systems. And, that's what they teach in college, not high school.

We need to be looking to where our competitiveness can win - clean energy, high tech, automation, innovation.

For another example, Trump touts coal - yet coal employment is dead. Building a coal fired power plant requires a major investment that can only be paid off over 20 years. Who's going to lock money in coal for the year 2030? Also, there are already more people hired in clean energy than in coal. And, who is going to pay to clean up coal ash in the Carolinas, pay for the healthcare for those living anywhere near coal operations, etc.? So far, not the corporations making the profit. One doesn't even have to dial in the cost of climate change.

 

One hundred thirty-nine percent federal deficit spending and one hundred sixty-seven percent debt: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Tax cut economics are WorthLess, when they don't cover Spending.

 

Many of those good reasons were created by America's government.
Avoiding confiscatory taxation.
Avoiding abusive regulations
Avoiding corrupt politicians

The reason business confidence jumped the day Trump won is because they knew Trump actually loves for businesses to hire Americans. Obama and Hillary just tolerated businesses as a necessary evil and piggy-bank.

 

Funny how your standards change for the convenience of argument. You know nothing about Trump except what the media has told you.
In this day and age- that is hardly anything to trust, no matter which way it's blowing.

 

You confuse taxes and spending.

Do you think the government has much more revenue than it needs? Yes or no answer, if you please.

 

i am not confusing deficit spending or debt.

 

No, it's you that had the problem with that.

There is no comparison between the information we have for and about Trump and the information we get from someone who is a candidate for aid before we actually talk to the individual.

 

Whether the government has more than it "needs" isn't a yes/no question.

One thing is for certain: the government doesn't have more than we have demanded that they spend.