See, you keep saying that but in states the minimum wage was raised the number of people employed in low wage occupations grew with everything else. I don't think you realize the ramifications of no minimum wage either. I have an immigrant coworker who migrated to the US about 10 years ago because most of the jobs would pay people slave wages because there were no laws or minimum wages. It was a free for all. Free markets attempt to get the cost of everything down to as low as possible, this is good except when people are involved.
Labor is a commodity like any other. It responds to the laws of supply/demand just like any thing else. Only where there is far greater supply of labor than demand will wages go low. When you have a large supply and low demand, prices fall. Conversely, look at the recent oil boom in the midwest. Truck drivers making over 100k per year, Walmart in ND pays $18/hr, etc.. Because there are more jobs than people to fill them. If what you are saying is true, then the majority of jobs would be AT the minimum wage, when 95.6% of jobs pay MORE than the minimum. So why, when free market tries to reduce costs to minimums, do most jobs pay more than minimum wage? Supply and demand forces wages higher. The answer to low wages is increased demand for labor, not an artificial wage floor. Look at wages in ND for confirmation of this, high demand and low supply have made the potential for millionaire truck drivers and middle class walmart workers.
Unemployment due to not having marketable skills? Sorry, accepting a minimum wage job as a stop gap is one thing. As a career, that's no one fault except the reflection in the mirror. Don't make excuses for laziness.
You are begging the question that anyone is working a minimum wage job as a career. Obsolescence is a factor. How many nails are still made by hand?
Not many and its sad. You're right. Jobs that used to be done by people aren't anymore. Times change. Its up to you as a person to change or be left behind. Minimum wage is what it is. A minimum amount of pay for a minimum amount of skill, a job that can be essentially done by anyone. The "minimum". If you want to direct your outrage, look no further than Clinton signing that cute little agreement with China which overnight, KILLED and DESTROYED U.S. manufacturing forever. China wasn't stupid. The tax the (*)(*)(*)(*) out of U.S. goods sold there or simply not allow it. Want to know why?
Why push that burden on Individuals when a natural rate of unemployment is Institutional? We could be solving for this social dilemma on an at-will basis through that form of Individual Liberty. Is that too much to ask from the right?
So if unemployment fell to 2% low wages would rise even for unskilled positions? I'm willing to hear you out on ths one, because there's no denying the demand and supply law or any economic law for that matter, is Nebraska, South Dakota, and Utah following the same way? The point is, if people are paying that wage, they certainly can afford to. Walmart, target, tjx companies, and several others have raised wages because they're losing workers as the economy recovers, so they CAN pay it, but they won't as long as there's a surplus of cheap labor. Either way companies will still need to hire workers if they had to pay $15, so they would.
We have to care more than that. We need to be sure our policies are leading toward adequate employment here at home as well as being internationally competitive. Our nation is moving away from manufacturing and toward information related enterprise. One result is that the education level needed to be competitive today is rising and the jobs that provide a middle class lifestyle without college education (such as manufacturing did) are not. When we moved from agrarian to manufacturing we saw a similar rise in need for education so we extended our support for education from 8th grade to high school graduation. Today, we need to move beyond that to include two to four years of college, because of the changing requirements of good employment as well as international competition. Having a future of under educated people with low paying jobs combined with good jobs held by graduates with monstrous debt is just not anything close to what we need.
if you want to make real money, you have to have your own biz. It's not that hard to do. You just have to look around and find something intelligent. I know a guy who went overseas, married a dentist, took her back to US. Now he gets $30k per year from her (untaxed). How hard was that? it cost him about 10k to set it up, and he used his school loans to do it.
Some on the left may believe we should merely Use capitalism for all of its worth. Solving for a natural rate of unemployment to lower our tax burden is one line of reasoning. Solving for an natural rate of unemployment while solving simple poverty in our republic would be even better since it can lower the cost of more expensive, means tested welfare through gains in market share and attrition.
Multiple problems with this proposition. Those that are economically disadvantaged and living in poverty due to numerous reasons can't afford to seek higher education or job skills because all of their time and income is consumed by day-to-day living. The "middle income" jobs that provided the rungs on the economic ladder to middle income are disappearing. The person finds it much harder today to work and succeed because there are fewer middle income jobs per capita and more people competing for those few jobs. What a person's labor is worth is incorrectly tied to the "market" which always strives to lower compensation and has done so to the point that the 'value of the labor' is no longer represented by market compensation. Historically there were two opposing forces with the market provided the negative force striving to reduce compensation while organized labor provided the positive force to increase compensation. Unfortunately we have those advocates for the wealthy owners of enterprise, that the market benefits, who have opposed organized labor that benefits the worker and provided balance in compensation. The power of organized labor has been politically gutted by our laws and with it "fair compensation for labor" as the market has become dominate resulting in gross under compensation for labor. I would put forward the proposition that if there was an equal balance between the "market" that benefits the owners and the "unions" representing the workers then we probably won't require a minimum wage. The two opposing forces would reach a mutually agreed upon "balance" for compensation (i.e. value of labor) that would eliminate the need for a minimum wage.
The most practical solution is to simply reserve Labor at the rock bottom cost of a form of minimum wage, public, instead of private.
Wages should be sufficient to not require public subsidy. Employers who choose to pay wages that require public subsidy for their employees should be required to reimburse the government the entire expense of providing that subsidy including administrative costs.
Couldn't disagree with you more. QUOTE=unrealist42;1064914923]Wages should be sufficient to not require public subsidy. Employers who choose to pay wages that require public subsidy for their employees should be required to reimburse the government the entire expense of providing that subsidy including administrative costs.[/QUOTE]
For starters.....the decision to provide public assistance was made by the politicians, not the employers. Why should the employer pay for the decision? Second, what about plain old hard work? Low wage workers know they can/will get public assistance, and therefore are discouraged from bettering themselves via education and/or moonlighting and working two jobs. Again.....why should the employers pay for that? Third.....public assistance looks at more than just income; tt also looks at assets and debt. Your idea would potentially penalize employers for hiring employees with poor money management skills. Employers wanting to avoid reimbursing the government would all begin requesting credit history on potential employees and refuse to hire those that have large debt and few assets. Extrapolate that.....your idea would force otherwise capable workers into bankruptcy. Finally, why even bother with such an idea? Free market competition generally results in new efficiencies. The answer.....government needs to get its hands out of private enterprise. And your plan even includes employers subsidizing the government for their administrative costs? You must be kidding me? Just another "program", mismanaged by big government, leading to huge waste and more fraud. Explain yourself.[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE] Free market competition does not exist where some competitors are subsidized and some are not. If the people decide to provide welfare for the most impoverished why should they allow businesses to benefit from that? Is it fair to the taxpayers that their taxes are used to subsidize the profits of businesses? If there was no social income support programs wages would be higher. Why should some businesses be allowed to profit from that when most others do not but must pay the taxes that subsidize them, some of whom compete directly against them? The alternative is to raise the minimum wage so that workers do not need welfare.
You wouldn't have to worry about production moving out of the country if you slapped a huge tariff on the product. And that's exactly what we should be doing to Chinese products right now.
Tarrif's are fundamentally bad policy. The stock market crash of 1929 was due to the announcement that Smoot Hawley would be implemented. Restrictive trade tarrifs were a major contributor to the Great Depression. A more recent example are the steel tarrifs implemented in the early GWB presidency which resulted in a net loss of jobs in the US economy. Increasing prices results in less consumption and less production overall. You make the mistake of only considering the short term effects on small special interest groups and not considering the long term effects on the overall population which is the most important and most often ignored objective of economic policy. Politicians whose main goal is reelection exploit this populist general lack of understanding.
those working low paid jobs need to get a clue. Dont pay rent and utilities, don't commute. live in an old van, very near your work. In 1-2 years, you'll have saved enough to get the training needed to get a much better paying job. save money at that job and soon you/ll have a much better job still. Right now, if you're willing to live in a truck, driving otr in the USA, you can clear over 60k per year, and several siuch trucking companies will pay for your training. What they really do, of course, is sign you to a year's contract, during which you'll make 20k less than you should have, to 'pay" for the 5k worth of trainig that they'll give you. You can save 10k per year living in the van, sign on as a co-driver with an experiened, independent operator, and clear 40k or more your first year of driving. Your second year, if you go at it right, you can clear 80k. there are very few personal expenses when you are driving 80 hours per week. No rent, no utilities. The poor need to postpone (or forget about) having kids until they've got that stable, well paid personal biz, letting them work few hours, locally, so that they'll have the time and money to do a proper job of raising any kids that they subsequently have.
Where will you shower or cook food? Eating out is expensive. What if said car breaks down? Run off by police? What about all the people who weren't poor but have kids and ended up poor? What if you can't afford a car? Lots of poor folks can't. With a payment, gas and insurance a car will run ~$400 a month. If you work full time at minimum wage that leaves $800 left over, since you must buy and consume food all at once because of no storage or cooking you can bet your food will cost you ~$300 a month, now we've got 500 left a month. When its cold heat will have to run, which means you can add an extra $70 at minimum a month for gas. If a car repair happens, it could easily eat that leftover $425. This also leaves out any other expenses, which there are bound to be. Your idea doesn't even work in theory. A person would only have accumulated (again, assuming nothing goes wrong) less than $5000 at the end of the year. Way less then out of pocket job training costs.
