We crossed posts. My last one has a house.gov link referencing many other sources with generally show that the min wage has a negative impact and not a neutral or even beneficial one.
I wonder if anyone can or will propose an alternative to the minimum wage, as well as a transition plan that gets us from where we are today to that alternative.
I'm not actually trying to change gul's mind on anything. But we have argued from the common-sensical view as well as providing a ton of studies (and that was just the first link I googled) on it. But for him to say he'd vote "present" on the issue...
The alternative is to let it die a meaningless death. Quit passing increases in it. Even if we could never get it repealed completely, that'd be a tremendous start.
There's no shame in not always being sure what is the best answer. To live otherwise is to subscribe to dogma.
It's kind of funny. CA has a higher state minimum wage than does the US federal government. Yet, when Governor Kennedy decided to create an executive order regarding Legislative branch employees having to take a temporary pay cut that is paid back in full once the state budget is passed, he didn't offer them the state minimum wage, he offered them the federal minimum wage. I wonder why that might be.
No, but there is shame in making 99% of your decisions based off of polls. That's probably why nobody knows what the hell Obama's positions are most any topic since he changes them so frequently. You see back during your extended hiatus from the boards, I did pose the question to the Obama supporters here, asking them if they could do two things regarding the candidate they support. First being identify his accomplishments since being a member of the US Senate. The second was identifying his positions. Do you think I got a single straight answer on either of the above?
Increase productivity, make larger inventory orders to take advantage of bulk rates, find new suppliers, increase their customer base with new items and sales, diversify, adjust profits down, look for ways to decrease building or utilities or shipping costs, cut employee frills, increase prices, lots and lots of stuff. Any good business person has a multitude of options. And anecdotally, the most successful businesses I know of are those that really work hard to keep prices down.
That's generally the way the free market works. Those that work the hardest to provide the best product for the best prices succeed. Those that can't compete generally look to government to save their bacon.
Exactly, you hit the nail on the head with your final statements. What is one of the largest overhead for most any business? Their payroll. One of the ways payroll are kept down especially when those costs increase is by hiring fewer people, or laying people off.
It would have to be. It is funny though watching the spin that occurs in an effort to try and pretend like that people do not lose their jobs under Democratic leadership and burden increases on employers such as higher minimum wages.
The thing is, a lot of your options are...what's the term for it?--your actions to reduce costs in one place increase costs elsewhere--zero sum gain (or at least much less gain than you'd expect). If you make larger inventory orders, then you add carrying costs for this inventory--warehousing, tracking, etc. When you say "find new suppliers", I assume you mean ones that will supply you at a lower cost. If that is the case you're driving price/profit down with your suppliers, so you're not solving the problem--just shifting it. If you increase productivity, you need less workers. More products and diversification cut your productivity and increase costs because you either need more people to be able to sell and support your diversification or you do a worse job supporting your customers. And of course if you cut employee benefits or increase prices you're just defeating the whole purpose for the mandatory wage increase any how.
One of these days a certain segment of the population will realize that people go into business in order to make money...not provide jobs for other people. The goal isn't how many people they can support, it is how much profit can be made. Jobs and employees are a necessary evil to accomplish that goal and where most businesses have a choice between maintaining profit or losing money to support other people, guess which they will choose if they have a choice. Thus, not only will they have less employees, but those minimum wage employees will have to do more work as they are probably going to be forced to do the work that two people used to do. Sure, other things effect these decisions and the economy but pretending a raise in minimum wage does much besides burden everyone more is silly. It's probably fantastic when you are a teenager and your parents foot all your real bills and your pay is your pocket money, but for anyone living off of it, it is probably only helpful at first before the costs catch up with it.
That argument only works if everyone is paid minimum wage. Yes it will raise prices slightly on average, but those price rises will be less than the wage increases.
Are you sure about that? How much do you think that McDonald's can raise the price of a hamburger before people will basically say screw it, i"m not buying one of their hamburgers? Now add in the extra cost. Do you think they will keep the same number of people working at any particular time of day or will they decrease hours for employees?
A Big Mac in Australia costs around AUS$4.00 The federal minimum wage for adult employees (with younger ages receiving a lower percentage) works out to $13.74 an hour. Maccas is everywhere here. I'm not going to get into an argument of what (if any) the US minimum wage should be, but things generally do adjust.
Well we aren't talking about Australia, or its minimum wage. We are talking about the US. A completely different country with different overhead. Also different people with completely different mind sets on the whole issue of taxation.
So all of a sudden your universal rules which are being trumpeted as the case always aren't actually that? If indeed you are correct and the effects of a minimum wage are different in the US to any other country (a rather dubious claim) then that would tend to prove you cannot just lay down one simple rule as always being the case.
LOL, true, you just more than make up for the cost in taxes in having to support their rears via the various services.
What universal rules? What makes you think I've ever been speaking about your country or for that matter most any other country? I am discussing simple facts about the United States. The fact that you haven't figured that out long ago is truly your problem.
But there's a minimum number of employees they need to keep their business running. For instance, a fast food place presumably needs a cashier, a drive-through operator, and probably 1-2 cooks. McDonald's can't have the cashier also cook the food and operate the drive through for 18 hours straight. Granted, if they are operating with more than enough people, they can afford to lay off employees or hire fewer employees. But any business would be stupid to be so completely overstaffed; they'd be wasting money before the minimum wage were raised. And it's not like McDonalds is that expensive to begin with. A ten cent increase on an 89 cent burger is nothing. Just check the ground for a dime on the ground when you walk into the restaurant. Edit: Just to clarify, I really don't know if a minimum wage is a good thing or a bad thing. It definitely has it's pros and it has it's cons.
It is so entertaining to read your spin when you are justifying and defending all the various forms of taxation imposed by the various levels of government. Thanks for the good time.
It is entertaining when you forget to read my posts at all and immediately rush to make a stupid judgment based on what you think I support. Minimum wage is not a tax, neither is McDonalds increasing the costs of their burgers by ten cents. I was offering a counter argument to the typical "minimum wage=layoffs and less jobs" argument. And in your rush to prove what an illiterate idiot you are, you missed the part where I said I neither support nor oppose a minimum wage. I bet you're sitting at your computer constantly hitting F5, waiting to read less than half of my post.
