Just for giggles I decided to look at what a Seattle Police Department police dispatcher makes. Per their website starting pay is over $47,000 per year. That's $903.85 per week. That breaks down to about $22.60 an hour. In and of itself that ain't too shabby. The job of a police dispatcher is demanding, stressful, and critical to the safety of officers and the citizens in the community. There was a difference of $13.28 per hour / 59% between what a dispatcher made and the minimum wage of $9.32 per hour in Washington state. Now with this new law the difference will be narrowed to $7.60 an hour or 34%. So will the wages of Police dispatchers be raised to compensate for this disparity? Isn't the work of a police dispatcher a lot more valuable than the work a janitor does or the work of someone flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant? If it is raised then what are the consequences to the community? Ditto if they aren't raised. Will dispatchers decided that the compensation is no longer enough for the environment they work in? So where will the businesses get the money to be able to pay those higher wages? Will they raise the prices they charge? Will they move to further automate operations? True. But lets consider who the super majority of of minimum wage earners are. Teens and young adults. How many of those are still living at home? How many of those have families? A miniscule number. So in the end the economy is upended for what? Meanwhile in Switzerland they just overwhelmingly voted to maintain their lack of a minimum wage. They are able to have a good standard of living across the nation with out a minimum wage. How?
Regarding the police dispatcher, s/he should be paid for the value of the work, not as some arbitrary multiple of another position's wage rate. The theory behind raising the minimum wage is that the janitor is currently paid less than the work's value. If this is also true for the dispatcher, then by all means, let's fix it, but that is a separate evaluation.
Right. It's much better to have the government subsidize all the people who now won't be hired because employers can't afford them.
Well, that's great news! We'll just have to adjust this continent to be Australia's size and shape, staht speakin' Ust-rile-yin, and, y'know, be Australia. Gotta love lib'rulz. They don't believe in universal anything... unless they do.
None of that has anything to do with anything except American Exceptionalism...in this case, exceptional stupidity.
Geographically and culturally, Australia is probably a closer match to the U.S. than anywhere else. On the other hand, so, apparently, have the Swiss.
However, the value of work is not determined in a vacuum. The skilled communication work of a 911 dispatcher with a high level of stress and responsibility isn't worth $22 an hour because there's something magic about $22. Its value is determined partly by the fact that in order to take a job with those stress and responsibility levels, a person with the required skills is going to want a higher standard of living than what they could get by doing something less demanding.
Except when we make excuses for failing to master the rudiments of the minimum wage and healthcare and...the way every other industrialized nation does...
Riiiight. We should put even more power in the hands of government. Because that's working out so well so far.
Collective bargaining agreements are much more common in Switzerland, that means most of the country is effectively covered by a minimum wage while it isn't nationally enforced by the government.
That's my point. So what happens? Raise the wage of the dispatcher, expect them to stick with the job because it's their civic duty, or lose dispatchers who can make a little less and not have to deal with the stresses of the job?
There are plenty of low stress* $15 an hour jobs available now, why is the dispatcher not taking it? *not sure if fast food qualifies as low stress.
Just b/c they border each other doesn't mean they are near duplicates. They US borders Mexico, you wouldn't say we were near duplicate geographies and cultures.
Don't know about where you live or what you make, but as someone who makes around what the dispatcher does I can tell you that $7 an hour raise around here makes for a SIGNIFICANT higher standard of living. Give me that and not only are we able to contribute more to savings but we get to the place where we start doing the math on Anne only working part time. Now TAKE AWAY seven bucks an hour and that has even more effect, significant lifestyle changes. Renting out rooms, etc.
Fast food (or any type of food service)isn't exactly candyland. Take it from someone who once did it, it's a VERY stressful job. Most of the people you deal with during rush hour are inconsiderate assholes who want it their way and they want it NOW. Plus your hours are constantly changing so you never develop a consistent sleep pattern which leaves you out of sorts. Of all the jobs I've worked in my life, I would have to rate the fast food industry as the most overworked, least paid and least respected of them all.
Well-Paid Workers Strengthen Local Economies Nick Hanauer is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Seattle. He is the co-author of two books, "The True Patriot" and "The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government." UPDATED JUNE 5, 2014, 12:25 AM Orthodox economists and trickle-down dogmatists are sputtering in disbelief over Seattle’s new $15 minimum wage, convinced it will destroy our economy. As House Speaker John Boehner is fond of saying, “If you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it.” They are wrong. Seattle’s minimum wage is already way higher than in most of America. Yet our economy is thriving. At $9.32 an hour, Seattle employers already pay 27 percent more than the federal $7.25 minimum wage. And our tipped workers earn $9.32 as well, 437 percent more than the $2.13 federal tipped minimum. So if Speaker Boehner is right, Seattle must have massive unemployment. Yet of the nation’s 50 largest cities, Seattle ranked first in population growth last year and third lowest in unemployment. And according to the most recent Paychex IHS report, Seattle is second only to San Francisco in job growth in small businesses. Guess which cities have the highest minimum wage? In order, San Francisco and Seattle. This makes perfect sense. The fundamental law of capitalism is that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers — and more workers. A city in which restaurants pay workers enough so that they can afford to eat in restaurants, doesn’t have fewer restaurants. It has more of them. But if a worker earns only $7.25 an hour, almost no money goes to local small businesses. At $7.25 an hour, you can’t afford to eat in restaurants, go to the beauty shop, or buy flowers for mom. If the minimum wage had tracked productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.70 today; had it tracked the wages of us in the top 1 percent, it would be $28. Raising it to only $15 in a city as prosperous and expensive as Seattle isn’t a risky experiment. The risky experiment has been the 30 years of trickle-down policy that enriched a few of us while eviscerating the middle class. The most insidious part of trickle down isn’t the idea that if the rich get richer, that’s good for the economy. It is that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. A $15-an-hour wage isn’t a risky and untried policy in Seattle. It is the natural evolution of common-sense economic thinking. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...kers-strengthen-local-economies?smid=tw-share
Even the IMF now agrees that less inequality creates stronger economies. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/feb/26/imf-inequality-economic-growth The Australian economy outperformed most of the OECD almost certainly because the previous government avoided austerity measures and because the high minimum wage means we have a strong consumer base.
Austerity was a disaster for Europe. There is no question that countries that instead went the stimulus route recovered more quickly and thoroughly. Too bad the US didn't also get the wages part right.
That's my point. The dispatcher thinks that the shit ain't worth it and quits. Then what happens? Do you raise the rates to retain them? Where is the revenue to do that going to come from? Do you let them go and then spend money training new people? What about the lost experience? What about the quality of the applicants? Will officer and citizen safety suffer? So say the city decides that they need to keep their current dispatchers and they raise taxes to cover this. Let's say property taxes. So consider this quote from this article from the Stateman in Austin TX (sorry the rest of it is behind a paywall) Sure she specifically, and the residents of Austin generally, decided they wanted really nice stuff in their area. But they didn't consider the ramifications. They didn't think of how these really nice things would be paid for. Now it's time to pay up and they can't. Agreed. It ain't by any stretch of the imagination and easy job. So what's the average length of time working in that environment for the teenager or early 20 something? A year? 6 months? 18 months? Then where do they go? They go up. They get the better job. Yes you will have the outliers who are only qualified for that, but even the biggest moron can get out and up from flipping burgers. But let's say they can't. They get raises normally after 6 months to a year. They get promotions that come with more pay. They aren't making minimum wage. That's called life. You pay your dues when you are younger and you get the pay off when you are older. My wife and I went through the same thing. Got married in our mid 20s and faced a lot of lean times. Over time things got better as we gained experience and got better jobs. Then my wife went back to school to get her masters. The last 3 years have absolutely sucked ass. However she graduates in August and then payoff will be there. Then there are others who state that economic mobility is more important that inequality because mobility provides more opportunity to climb out of ones current situation and into a better life / standard of living. LINK Economic austerity in Europe was a sham. Look at Iceland and what they went through and where they are now for a better example.
No, you ignored my point to restate yours. I'm calling your premise that 'the dispatcher will think that the shit ain't worth it and quit' into question. Right now there are multiple times more $15 an hour jobs out there than there are $9 ones. And as T.R. points out generally speaking the current $9 jobs not only pay shit but suck to work, which won't change with an increase in pay. So if the dispatcher isn't quitting NOW for the current $15 jobs, why will they do so when there are more shitty $15 jobs? You've got to answer that question before we go down your FUD rabbit hole.
So what happens to the folks making $15 an hour now? Those are more skilled. Why put up with those headaches when an easier job at the same rate of pay is available? Yes sweeping and mopping floors is easier.