Federal Minimum Wage

You keep responding to things I'm not saying.

People work to better their situation. Aside from sheer luck, it's the only way people can.

No disrespect intended to anyone who has one, but a minimum wage job is one for unskilled labor, one that most anyone could do with very little training. That's why it pays minimum wage; in many places, these jobs would pay even less without the law requiring it.

By mandating a higher wage for these jobs, the state is incentivizing people to stay in them.

Are you more or less likely to leave a job if your pay is raised?

 

As others have pointed out, the pandemic has showed the vital importance of so-called unskilled labor to society. Someone's gotta make the food, clean the floors, and wipe the old people's asses. These people deserve a living wage. They certainly deserve that more than CEOs deserve their vastly inflated salaries!

 

That's a good thing for the company, you dim cockwomble. Have you ever *been* at a job with lower-than-average pay? You can get work done outta them because they're too busy looking for their next job? That's why the first dealership I worked for was a shitshow, even for the already low bar of auto sales. As soon as that place got a general manager with a real commission scale, I finally started seeing the same faces when I'd go by to get service every six months

I'm more likely to quit if I'm treated like shit. I could've stayed in the Navy if the only thing I was after was money.

Raising my pay will make me less inclined to leave if I enjoy what I'm doing. Not every is suited for management or supervisor positions but they don't deserve to starve because of it, you absolute ghoul.

 

Nope. Which is why a Federal minimum can't be "very low" - the idea of the 15 is that even in MS or OK you need that much (more actually) to just get by, but if you are MA or NY or CA you ought to be mandating more on the state/local level as appropriate.

Of course, sometimes you get TX, where Austin, for example, really needs to be higher but the rural Nationalists keep electing assholes and idiots (not mutually exclusive categories of course) to run state government.

 

The funny thing is,Paladin has expressed a huge lack of desire against cooking and relies on essential (and underpaid) workers for nearly all of his meals. Very odd attitude to have for one in his situation to take.

Far too common, but odd.

 

I don't even like the minimum wage, but that's a terrible argument for multiple reasons.

First, it outright states that minimum wage jobs are necessarily something to be aspired beyond, implying that they are low status. Why should that be? Wages are about ease of labor replacement, with lower wages for more easily-replaced roles, not nobility of purpose. That teachers and social workers make very little is testament to the monopsony power of the government, not to their replaceability as it should be.

Second, it's not even true. Higher wages enable people to save and train up skills to fit more agreeable jobs.

Third (related to the first), there's an implication that unskilled (proxy for easily replaceable, but if everyone had a degree in computer science, programmer wages would fall dramatically too) labor is unpleasant. It's not so, necessarily. No reason that someone who finds unskilled labor personally rewarding *should* aspire to more, if they don't miss the income.

 

I'm not looking down on someone with a minimum wage job. I'm saying it's a tragedy to be capable of more but to be enticed into not doing it.

Inevitably, wages not set by the market are skewed to some interest's advantage.

Some people, sure.

But certainly not everyone. And one is less motivated to fulfill one's potential if one is given financial incentive not to.

I respect every individual's right to make their own decisions, even where I disagree or disapprove of them. Yes, if you're happy washing dishes, by all means, continue doing it.

But a young person facing an expensive and difficult college education should not be enticed into choosing less ambitious work by making a job pay more than it otherwise would.

 

If that’s the case, why would anyone work minimum wage?
and don’t even tell me it’s about motivation. Leave that shit out of your next response.

 

It's a job they can do? They don't have higher paying options?

Again, are you more or less likely to remain at a job if the pay is increased?

Sorry, but incentives and motivations play a big role in the outcomes of economic policies.

 

[Rod Serling]Consider the case of a man called Paladin. He seems like a personable guy. Successful in his work, never openly hostile, but immutable in his opinions, particularly in terms of those he considers below him on the food chain, specifically minimum- and below-minimum wage workers.

“If people want to better themselves, they can” is his argument. “Pay them more for the work I wouldn’t want to do, and they won’t aspire to accomplish what I have.” No amount of reasoning, much less real-life examples of obstacles to that hypothesis, will convince him to rethink his opinion.

He awakes one morning to a strange silence. The janitor who takes out the trash and otherwise maintains the apartment building he lives in is nowhere in sight. The guy who comes by every Thursday to mow the lawns and trim the hedges is also a no-show. He is forced to drag the trashcans out to the curb himself while stepping over the leaves that have accumulated on the sidewalk and in the carport overnight.

Puzzled, Paladin nevertheless gets in his car to go to work. He stops for gas, but the pumps are locked and there’s no one in the booth. He stops at his usual place for breakfast, but the drive-through is also closed. He decides to stop at his local supermarket to pick up something to bring to the office for breakfast, but every supermarket in the region is closed because there’s no one to stock the shelves or work the cash registers.

More annoyed than puzzled now, Paladin drives to work with his gas tank on Empty and finds the carpark littered with debris. He can’t get through the lobby because there’s no one at Security. From outside he can see a sign on the elevators: “Out of Order.”

He calls his boss's home number, but the call kicks over to voicemail. Apparently the boss’s housekeeper is among the MIA.

On his way home, Paladin doesn’t feel well. He decides to stop at the local urgent care center. The door is locked, but he pounds on it anyway. A doctor tells him “None of my assistants showed up. You’re SoL, buddy” and walks away, leaving Paladin to his panic attack.

What Paladin doesn't yet realize is that this is not a nightmare, but the fulfillment of his disdain for anyone who isn’t as successful as he is. He has passed into a special realm known as “I Got Mine and Fuck the Rest of You”… in The Twilight Zone.[/]

 

It. Isn't.

The purpose of the federal minimum wage is to say "no matter where you are in this country, even in the shittiest of shitty red states where the cost of living is super low because Republican policies have turned them into places that hardly anybody wants to live in, you should not be paid less than this amount."

It does not prevent states where a higher minimum is appropriate from setting a higher minimum.

As for this --

-- just how comfortable do you think a person making $15 an hour is, anyway?

Particularly since various aspects of most mininum-wage jobs -- from the necessities of service-sector scheduling, where you need a lot of people during high-traffic times and not the rest of the time, to companies' demands for extreme flexibility that make it hard for a person to successfully hold two jobs simultaneously -- make it very difficult to actually reach 40 hours a week.

 

Answer: He doesn't care/it's not his problem.

@Paladin , point-blank question: Did you work for pay (part-time, summers only) when you were in high school?

 

"More" according to whom? That's a value judgement, and a subjective one at that. You're no legitimate arbiter here.

Someone's potential, wasted or otherwise, is not your concern. And the empirical evidence from UBI studies indicates that this is a relatively minor concern compared to the benefits of the additional income (which, for those working at the time, is equivalent to higher wages) getting people out of debt, educating themselves, and specializing, and getting better jobs. If that's not helping people fulfill their potential, what is?

Ambitious according to whom? Even if we could agree on a definition, you're setting up a Catch-22. That's a better argument for free college education (and you don't want your tax dollars to pay for that either) or a UBI than for a lower minimum wage.

 

If someone makes just enough money to avoid poverty and suffering, and goes "this is good enough," how naturally ambitious could they possibly be?

 

Ooh. Bad move. And a false assumption on your part.

https://cepr.net/documents/publications/fast-food-workers-2013-08.pdf

I don’t know about the company for which you work, but the company for which I work has outsourced, downsized, frozen hiring... the department in which I got my first job at this company had over fifty employees at the time. Now there are 4.

Yes. So, again I ask, why would someone be so lazy as to not accept a higher paying job?
this time, instead of relying on propaganda and prejudices, think logically and give me a logical answer.

 

By not mandating a higher wage, we'd be subsidizing a lot of businesses who pay little to nothing to their employees.

 

Except now they're going to receive a "living wage."

Of course, that still hasn't been defined.

 

Let's go with this, the first paragraph from the Wikipedia article on living wage:

"Basic but decent" seems like a good minimum standard. Food, housing, transportation, and other needs. I would argue that some level of things generally considered to be "extras" would fall under this category as psychological needs, such as being able to afford occasional social outings, entertainment, technology, and such.

Most importantly, I would think a "living wage" would allow for people to make basic choices about their living situation and lifestyle. A young adult could choose to move out of their parents house and gain some independence, or stay and enjoy a higher standard of living and/or save money. One could choose to live alone and have more privacy and control of their environment, or they could have room mates/cohabit with a romantic partner and share household responsibilities.

Would providing this standard of living encourage people to be less ambitious? Maybe, but giving people the ability to make more choices would encourage people to be more ambitious. When the only choices people have are make too little money or make no money, or stay with an abusive partner or be homeless, people feel defeated, and feel like it's impossible to get out of the hole they're in. Hopelessness definitely encourages people to be less motivated.

 

I noticed that Paladin has yet to respond to my post where I mentioned money isn't the sole motivator in someone's decision making in picking jobs.

 

That's because he's an asshole.

 

I never claimed money is the sole motivator.

Do you claim it isn't often a big motivator?

 

I'd argue job security, location, work-life balance and job satisfaction are often at least equal to paycheck.

There's a reason I'm in academia rather than corporate, and that's because I like choosing my own schedule, being able to talk freely about my ideas, working in a seaside town, knowing I can't be fired without due cause and being able to see myself in mirrors (shaving is very difficult, otherwise. Especially downstairs).

 

Oh, but you did. In the very thread you quoted. I asked for clarification multiple times and you continued with higher wages was the motivation and minimum wage was a demotivation.

 

If lower minimum wage and overall making things harder for lower income earners was correlated with bettering their condition then we'd probably expect to see that reflected in, you know, the facts.

Instead the USA trails behind most western countries in terms of social mobility.

Why? Because putting resources (time, money, energy) into something that might pay off down the line is a dangerous risk if you can't make ends meet now.

If you've worked 65 hours that week at three different low paying shift work jobs you don't have the energy when you get home to do anything but slump into bed, that resume update you were planning going delayed.

If your power is going to be turned off at the end of the week, it's hard to turn down an day of low paid work, even though you know spending that time studying in class would be a better long term use of your time.

 

Also, why would you leave a stable, low paying job when job searching in of itself is a full-time, unpaid job, predicated on taking time off if one is lucky to get an interview?
I was very lucky when I left fast food: My sister quit her job as an admin assistant at her company and recommended me, allowing me a full-time position at $4/hr more than at the burger joint. Not having connections makes things much harder. I since then left that position and came to Fred Meyer, where I actually made more per hour due to prior experience with FM while in college, but I had to fight to make 30 hours a week to meet financial needs.
(Note, I wasn't the first choice to replace my sister, possibly to avoid nepotism, but their first choice fell through)

 

Not to mention you have the effrontery to be a MUSICIAN, which is not in the PaladinBox of "sustainable jobs normal people can make a living at." How dare you?

There is no creativity allowed in PaladinVerse, only nose-to-grindstone "Yes-I-hate-my-job-but-they're-paying-me-and-my-Benevelont-Employers-have-condescended-to-give-me-HEALTH-INSURANCE! Praise them!"

 

The internet and home delivery is going to make the majority of retail obsolete, and I'm in retail.

Forget IT. Logistics is the field kids should be getting into. I have a few friends that got degrees in Logistics back in the '90's and they are raking in the dough. As brick and mortar retail declines, and home delivery grows, Logistics is going to be where its at.

 

For a while. AI can do that job quite well.

 

well, no... I believe the tenant has rights and interests that should be reflected. One of them is a stable rental contract.

I also believe landlords have an obligation to provide the services contracted at the price agreed to, along with reasonable upkeep.

Why is it you think people should be able to be evicted simply because a property collector (who has purchased everything on extended credit anyways-or is that somehow "earned" wealth?) arbitrarily decides they want a 100% increase because they're over leveraged?

 

If you have a contract (as any renter with a functioning brain would) then the landlord has to abide by it. But once the term of that contract (lease) expires and it's time for a new one, then the landlord can make any changes to the terms they like. If you find those terms unacceptable, then you move. That's a free market.

It's sort of the opposite of an HOA. But in both cases, the person who actually owns the property gets to set the terms.