Why Increasing Minimum Wage is Meaningless

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Aspinator
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14 Jan 2022, 1:26 pm

I am sure most of you have noticed rising prices due to supply chain issues. As a result businesses have raised their prices. To think that businesses will incur paying employees more money and not raise their prices is not being realistic. I would like to see employees make more money per hour but I feel businesses have to maintain their own bottom line. Do you think increasing the minimum wage would have any effect?



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14 Jan 2022, 1:30 pm

Businesses make so much money they can afford to pay living wages. Look at cooperations. They can afford to pay a living wage. It's just greed and refusing to keep up with inflation.


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kraftiekortie
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14 Jan 2022, 1:49 pm

Ask the people who would get a raise should the minimum wage be increased.



txfz1
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14 Jan 2022, 1:59 pm

It didn't work in the past, why would it work today? The natural of the world is you have to stand up for yourself.

“Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.”

~Thomas Sowell



auntblabby
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14 Jan 2022, 2:19 pm

so by the sound of that, some people are worthy only as slave labor/indentured servants to be slowly starved and worked to death.



Dox47
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14 Jan 2022, 2:48 pm

Not only do businesses simply raise their prices, making that new higher wage go less far, they also hire fewer people and work the ones they do hire as hard as possible while minimizing hours on the clock and pursuing automation where possible, thus reducing the demand for low skill workers and making those jobs miserable. I saw this first hand in the Seattle restaurant business when the city jacked up the MW, it wasn't pretty.


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funeralxempire
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14 Jan 2022, 4:22 pm

Aspinator wrote:
I am sure most of you have noticed rising prices due to supply chain issues. As a result businesses have raised their prices. To think that businesses will incur paying employees more money and not raise their prices is not being realistic. I would like to see employees make more money per hour but I feel businesses have to maintain their own bottom line. Do you think increasing the minimum wage would have any effect?


I think if a business is paying exorbitant bonuses to executives or inflating their stock price through buy-backs the idea they can't pay a living wage to each and every single employee is laughable.

They try to place more blame for increasing prices than is fair or reasonable on the costs of labour because the goal is to drive that cost down as low as possible, but who generates the profits? It's not the executives or the managers.


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auntblabby
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14 Jan 2022, 4:26 pm

if business won't pay its workers enough for them to live on, who do they expect will be able to afford to buy their products?



kraftiekortie
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14 Jan 2022, 5:06 pm

Nobody can live on a $15 an hour/40 hour a week salary in NYC.



Dox47
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14 Jan 2022, 6:04 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
I think if a business is paying exorbitant bonuses to executives or inflating their stock price through buy-backs the idea they can't pay a living wage to each and every single employee is laughable.


There are better fixes to that than just jacking up the minimum wage though, which creates problems where the value of the labor is less than the required wage.

funeralxempire wrote:
They try to place more blame for increasing prices than is fair or reasonable on the costs of labour because the goal is to drive that cost down as low as possible, but who generates the profits? It's not the executives or the managers.


I don't think it's quite that simple, good management really can make a huge difference (both for good and bad), even in industries that rely on relatively menial labor to actually produce the product. Marx had a good idea here and there, but the labor theory of value wasn't one of them.


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14 Jan 2022, 6:59 pm

I have been enjoying the r/antiwork sub on Reddit and I have learned how bad it is in the US to work and how many work places mistreat their employers. Now so many places have a shortage of them or have had to close their business due to not being able to hire new people. Raise your damn wages and offer good benefits and then people will want to work for you. Also back then people made living wages back then and they did just fine so we can do fine now with higher wages. People basically made more back then and now we make less today.

It's a joke when jobs try to hire graduates for $15 an hour and you can't live off of that given how high rent is now and housing.

But I do wonder what do people do for money if they are refusing to work. We need money to pay our bills, to keep gas in our car, and to eat. My mom's saying was "some money is better than no money" and this is exactly why workers are exploited because they know they don't have a damn choice. It's either take it or be homeless and starve.


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auntblabby
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14 Jan 2022, 7:03 pm

even if an undercapitalized firm can't afford to pay their workers more, at the very least they can do is TREAT THEM BETTER, iow stop with the demeaning remarks, constantly changing shifts, forced ass-kissing of bad customers, and wage theft. treat your workers like human beings for once.



Aspinator
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14 Jan 2022, 7:19 pm

I have felt that employers could afford to pay their employees more from a point of cost effectiveness. It costs less to pay their employees more than to constantly train new hires.



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14 Jan 2022, 7:21 pm

We have a similar problem in Australia where our national party leader Barnaby Joyce said that people think government can write money to offset shortages/wages (although he was referring to specific question about free antigen tests for the poor). His response was the public eventually pay through higher taxes or increased cost of goods/services.

While I understand the argument, how difficult is it to mandate, as a taxpayer I am always willing to tighten my belt if my fellow man is able to live above the poverty line. This is what separates progressives from the right who think people at below minimum wage should do 3-4 jobs to pay the rent and feed their children. A large number of homeless people are just such people who are hit by an emergency (car accident unable to work, or house repossession). Many of the working poor are just one default on their bills away from living on the streets.



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14 Jan 2022, 7:35 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
Ask the people who would get a raise should the minimum wage be increased.

This. There are many such on WP.


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14 Jan 2022, 8:30 pm

League_Girl wrote:
Businesses make so much money they can afford to pay living wages. Look at cooperations. They can afford to pay a living wage. It's just greed and refusing to keep up with inflation.

Do you own/operate such a business?

You're forgetting that not every business is Amazon.

I'm well above minimum wage but my earnings have slipped in value due to the irresponsible handouts and printing of money. Larger numbers aren't the answer.


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