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Seattle Approves $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage
An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle City Council announced on Monday that it has unanimously approved a $15 per hour minimum wage mandate. The new rate will go into effect starting April 1, 2015 in a tiered, gradual manner that depends on employer size. In the first year of implementation, hourly minimum wage will be raised to either $10 or $11 according to the employer size category. By 2021, hourly minimum wage across the board should be at or above $15. Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners."
$15 per hour is barely a livable wage currently; there's no way it will be in 2021.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
$15 will be the new $7.50
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
For those in zero hours contracts...
0x15 = 0...
Does this concern also service workers?
If it works at $15 why wouldn't it work at $100?
Of course, it doesn't work at $15, or any other price. Sure, it helps those who manage to keep their jobs, but everyone else... well... http://reason.com/blog/2014/05...
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I hope everyone on Seattle loves to interact with machines rather than people. That is what you will experience at McFastFoods, Starcoffee, and any other unskilled labored job.
Unfortunately this will hit teenagers the most. Contrary to what the supports of the home cherry pick, those who earn minimum wage have the least amount of experience. In other words, young people. And while the law will make some exception for teenager salaries, with the addition of all the enhanced automation, you'll have a city with a high population of unemployed teens which causes a different set of issues.
I hope I'm wrong and this turns out to be a good thing. It's nice to see a community try something different so everyone can learn from the experience.
In Sweden we have no minimum wage. We're said to be one of the richest countries in the world, but there is a dark underground that very few speak about, and that is about all those people who work for LESS than the US call "minimum wage". It may sound like a joke to you (especially if you read the numbers), but I can assure you - it is not. When I was new to Sweden, I had to work for LESS than minimum wage as a substitute teacher in some small city. Substitute teachers have no rights, receive only what they can negotiate (which is usually very little, and we compete with foreigners and FAS3...gov. unemployed activity candidates) for the scraps.
The same thing with burger flippers, and now also train-personnel (they're currently on STRIKE in Sweden right now, for the rights to work full-time instead of being paid by the hour and shared amongst many desperate job seekers).
This seems to be the net outcome of the society we've chosen today, to let the few have 80% of our assets, and the rest just work as slaves for the 10-20% rich elite. I must stress that I am not a socialist or communist by a long shot, but there is something wrong with a society that can't pay their workers a proper wage.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
as a small business owner, I predict these outcomes:
1. More long-term unemployed adults will apply for these jobs, pushing teens out of work. (Most businesses would rather hire an adult than a teen.)
2. Few will want to work full time at $15, because it will mean that they lose SNAP eligibility.
3. The price of burgers and lattes will go up.
In the first year of implementation, hourly minimum wage will be raised to either $10 or $11 according to the employer size category. By 2021, hourly minimum wage across the board should be at or above $15. Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners
Santa Fe has had a living wage since 2003, presently at $10.66. San Francisco implemented a living wage shortly thereafter, presently at $10.74. I'm sure there are others at this point.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
They've just promised that some other group of politicians will raise it years from now?
This seems to be the way so many new laws work: they're delayed until after the next election, so today's politicos can take the praise for passing the law, and the new bunch will be the ones in power when the problems become apparent.
The price of burgers and lattes will go up.
Nah. With interest rates at roughly 0%, this will just accelerate automation of low-skilled jobs.
If $15 makes sense, and they are thinking about the future, why not $20? For that matter, why not by fiat define the minimum wage to be $100/hour, and every person will automatically be rich!
Oh, you say, but $100 is ludicrous, even based on what we can foresee for 2021. No one would ever get hired!!! That is a strawman!!! But if that is true, why would $15 make sense and not $14.50, or $14.00... what seems like a living wage to a politician (or a voter, for that matter) is probably very different from a low-skill, low-education high school student (or, worse, dropout) who can't get any job at all, because no employer will take a risk on them at that wage level.
Oh, no problem, we will order employers to hire them....
I have been on both sides of the minimum wage issue, as a recipient and as an employer. Every argument for a flat one-size fits all number is flawed but, no, I don't have a better solution at this time. However, if you send money to my election campaign, I will be very thoughtful in my considerations...
- Studies estimate the 2012 minimum wage should be $10.52: http://www.cepr.net/documents/...
- Average inflation rate for US is 2-3%: http://www.usinflationcalculat...
- If they set it to $11/hr now, 2015-2020 = 5 years @ 3% inflation, $11 * 1.15 = $12.65. $15/hr is a bit high.
Both of my in-laws own small businesses. True small businesses with less than 10 employees and their takehome pay combined is about the median income of the average US household. They both would have to close shop if this happened. Good luck to small business owners in Seattle.
Mega-corps in Seattle I have no doubt will find a way to abuse this.
Then you have bunch of the best doing the jobs and everyone who is not feasible to hire for that $15/hr is simply put onto government support.
So, if all minimum wage people suddenly make 10$ more a day, rent will be raised > 200$ a month.
I'll just leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
"3. The price of burgers and lattes will go up."
Tell me how this is a bad thing since that stuff helps contribute to the national obesity rate? People out of work because they can't sell fattening foods to other Americans from places like McDonald's? Oh the horror, people are going to be forced to healthier food choices and actually have to work to prepare a meal to save money.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
$7.50 times 173 hours/month = $1298. Not much, to be sure. But enough to live on for a single. Or for a family with multiple wageearners. Keep in mind that a family would qualify for SNAP and rent support also. No car, no triple-play cable package. No latest model iPhone. That is the price of dropping out of high school.
I meant "compete".
Also, I was hoping the sarcastic nature of my post would show the problem of subjecting small businesses to the same higher wage larger businesses would be under. Sure, smaller businesses can raise prices, but I bet larger businesses can get by with little to no price increases. Care to guess which business type people will flock to?
... of cities I would travel to.
If I'm going to pay $10 for McDonalds, I'll do it in Honolulu. At least there the rain stops after 10 minutes.
The lowest earners are usually those that scrape the shit off of toilets.
I wonder if appreciation for them will rise if they decide en mass to take
a break for a month or two.
And noone will connect the dots.
I like how they conflate "minimum" and "living". The quoted councilman is doing it for effect, obviously, but it's not the same thing, and it won't be.
Jobs which currently exist, and are not worth paying for under the new wage will either go away, or become "sidework". This is how "sidework" started in the food service industries in the first place, after the minimum wage bumped to the point that it was no longer profitable enough to employ full time bus boys. It's why your tables don't get bussed by someone other than the waiter/waitress at even mid scale restaurants these days, and why in the higher end restaurants with bus staff, they tend to be paid out of shared tips from the wait staff at the lower end of high end places, or make minimum wage at the higher end.
Other jobs which are nice-but-not-strictly-necessary just won't get done. This is why your typical store owner doesn't have a kid washing down the sidewalk at the start of the day, and why the parking lot at the strip mall near your house looks like the inside of a dumpster, until the minimal cleaning work by local ordinance can be carried out by a street sweeper service that hits the parking lots of the local businesses as little as legally possible to get away with.
There will be jobs going away over this for sure. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out over time; I don't expect most other cities to be following this model, and I don't expect state adoption any time soon in Washington.
I'll just leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I wish you wouldn't. Pick up after yourself.
I like how they conflate "minimum" and "living". The quoted councilman is doing it for effect, obviously, but it's not the same thing, and it won't be.
It's just standard Leftyism. First you get a 'minimum wage', because, after all, no-one could be against having a mimimum wage for those poor people in low-paid jobs, could they? Where's your compassion? Then, when that's done, they move on to 'living wage', because no-one could be against those poor people in low-paid jobs earning enough to live on, can they? Then, of course, they'll have to set a 'maximum wage', because those EVIL CEOs earn way too much, how could you be opposed to preventing them from earning so much on the back of the low-paid workers? Then, eventually, they'll set the minimum and maximum wages to the same levels because how could you be opposed to eliminating inequality by having everyone paid the same?
It's so tediously predictable to be just plain boring these days.
I welcome this government mandate to make my human competition less competitive and less desirable.
> Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners
This is madness.
Imagine the minimum wage is $100/hour. There's a massive number of job which simply do not produce that much wealth per hour - they cannot exist, because to offer that job to someone is to lose money. All those jobs disappear.
This occurs for ANY minimum wage. Seattle has now eliminated all jobs which generate less than 15 USD/hour (well, more than that, given all the other costs and overheads of employing someone).
This appalling final sentence - first city, living wage - cannot apply to all those who now do not *have* a job, either because their job was eliminated or never came into existance in the first place, because of the minimum wage. These people are now on benefits and when benefits run out, then what? these people are the *non* earners.
A few will benefit from this law - those who's jobs are just under 15 USD/hour and of whom their work can still support a wage of 15 USD/hour.
Minimum wage law is always wrong, unfair, unjust and causes much more suffering than benefit.
As I mentioned in another post, which I won't point out, why not a separate minimum wage for larger businesses? Wasn't the whole idea that big corporations like McDonald's and Wal-Mart being able to afford to pay their employees a higher wage?
I oppose maximum wages. What are taxes for? Why not a negative income tax?
My dream would be for security. Universal health care, perhaps 2 years of college tuition free (based on state average), a negative income tax for the purpose of income security (seriously, even if we gave at most 60 million people (lowest quintile) $5k each, that'd only $300 billion; compare it to DoD budget and wars), etc. How can we be a wealthy country with even a single homeless person existing?
Sounds great, when can we expect this to be implemented?
Inputs to production are: labor and capital stock.
If you are a firm and your production costs have gone up, unless you want to drastically reduce profits and hurt your business, you will have to reduce costs - layoffs, hiring freezes.
An unseen cost is called the "Brain Drain" effect. Although wealth inequality sucks for the most of us, in countries where there is more wealth equality (higher taxes on the rich, higher minimum wages), high-skilled workers don't take home as much money. Thus, they know they can move to a country like America to make much more, and you see a movement of high-skill workers leaving the country (this is the brain drain).
Lastly, although a minimum wage seems like the answer (arguments being that the people in the lower income brackets have a higher marginal propensity to consume because they need to use nearly all of their money to live), it will decrease employment in the short run - and that's just not good timing for the U.S. Economy.
I would guess that it would also decrease the labor force participation rate, too.
But this will be an interesting case study.
Good luck, Seattle!
First you get (...) Then, when that's done, they move on to (...) Then, of course, they'll have to (...) Then, eventually, they'll (...)
Thank you for a textbook example of the slippery slope fallacy.
Just kidding, those are so common as to be plain boring these days.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
In my country a 15$/hour wage would be a dream come true for most. I work at a large firm, and I'm one of the best paid employees of the company, and even I get paid less than that. And the actual prices are not significantly different than in the US. Some things cost more, some things cost less. For example an US Gallon of petrol is about 6.6USD right now. So how in the word is it possible that in the US 15/hour is barely a living wage? How wasteful a life are you living there seriously?
If you have spent the past few years busting your ass at a job, and managed to make your way to $14/hr (say, you got promoted to a manager position at a restaraunt)... then what? Do you essentially go back to making minimum wage? Do you now make, as a manager, the same hourly wage as the dishwasher? Increasing the minimum wage is great for people that already make it, but I have always felt like it has screwed those who have worked hard to get a few raises over minimum wage.
What we really need is a maximum wage; a maximum amount of annual income -- from any source -- that a person can make. This maximum amount should be tied to the median income or some such so that if the rich and powerful want to increase their earning limit, they have to do things that will benefit all of society instead of hurting all of society.
Too much of the economy's lifeblood (i.e. money) is sequestered in the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy, which a) stalls the economy, and b) gives a disproportionate amount of socio-political power to those individuals. The current vast difference in wealth is as damaging to the human race as things like racism, homophobia, nationalism, etc. (if not more so), and people really need to realize this.
There is an entire class of people that most of society never sees, but which has a profound impact on their lives...and our current economic setup promotes sociopaths and psychopaths into this class. These people have the economic power and the self-centered focus to literally destroy the planet. This situation has to be rectified.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
This is why we HAVE states... Let Washington do something crazy*, and the rest of us will sit back and see how the crazy works out for their economy. I would expect either higher prices, or a rash of (eg.) fast-food restaurants closing.
If it goes bad for them, we don't have to go down that hole. If the predictions are off, then everyone else can adopt a significantly higher wage. The effort to get this across the country would be stupid and dangerous.
* Actually, to be fair this is only just BARELY crazy... Washington has higher cost of living than many states, and employees won't get the full $15 for several years, now. California's $10 minimum wage works fine, but a $15 minimum wage in Canute, Oklahoma would be downright ridiculous.
I also object to the "living wage" bullshit. A single mother with 10 kids in NYC isn't going to get by on her own, with any job... While a young, single guy renting a room in a small town, could be pretty comfortable with a part-time, $5/hour job. The only way to establish a "living wage" is to switch to full-fledged socialism, where jobs don't pay a fixed rate, but give you however much you need. I suppose "company towns" could make that kind of thing work, too, if those in charge so desired.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You are under the assumption that all jobs must generate wealth. Look at a janitor, how much wealth is this guy generating. Are people going to buy more just because the toilets are clean? What about school districts, are the janitors mopping the floor making the school any money? Maybe we should just fire all the janitors because if they don't produce wealth, they must be useless.
What about cashiers?
What about Middle Management?
How much money to these people directly generate vs how much their paid? A good cashier can process more customers in a shorter amount of time generating more dollars per minute income for a store and yet typically get paid shit wages. The average HR middle manager is just a useless paper pusher and get paid pretty damn well, even better than the engineers, developers, and laborers who actually *make* products the company sells.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
I don't expect state adoption any time soon in Washington.
Then I don't think you know WA state very well.
Are Sweden's elite also telling all of you that you could be living in India and you should shut up?
That's what Ive decided what I'm going to do: pretend I'm living in India.
I will not consume like an American. I will pretend I'm dirt poor.
Basically, I will not all those things the elite sells to us little people.
New car? Nope. Mines 20 years old and works fine.
New TV? Nope.
New computer? Ditto. Although, Internet has become a necessity in the States - shitty internet speeds too - like a Third World country.
I'm eating less and less meat - cut out red meat totally.
And it goes on.
Fuck'em. They want to play it that way, I'll give them their wish.
I'm also thinking of getting a band of kids dressed in rages to surround limos on Park Avenue to beg for money.
Imagine the minimum wage is $100/hour. There's a massive number of job which simply do not produce that much wealth per hour - they cannot exist, because to offer that job to someone is to lose money. All those jobs disappear.
Setting aside the stupidity of $100/hr minimum wage... (I mean, why not $1,000,000/hr right?)
The jobs that people do for under $15/hr still need to be done. Not every job produces wealth. Nobody gets rich by having clean floors, or mowed lawns, or bagged groceries. However, these are examples of tasks that arguable have to be done by someone, and the cost of not having them done can, at least in some cases, be argued to be greater than $15/hr.
The same applies to jobs that "do not produce that much wealth" - they still need to be done. Either you pay someone $15/hr to flip burgers, or you stop selling burgers and go out of business. Don't want to go out of business? Pay the $15/hr and increase your prices by the ten cents or whatever it averages out to be. What a goddamn stupid argument you're making.
I'd rather pay an extra buck for a trip to the local fast food place than have my tax dollars end up subsidizing the employees through food stamps and housing because they're barely paid enough to afford the same food they cook all day.
=Smidge=
OK so some businesses will not be able to either give up some profit or raise prices to accommodate the higher wages... they go belly up. But then whatever services they provided will be unavailable & someone will jump in & fill that gap. It's hard to believe the claims of job losses tied to the minimum wage.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
CAPITAL UNDER-UTILIZATION - & yes, it IS the problem you describe + why, almost perfectly...
I.E. -> Those "1%-ers" ARE "the problem" in that not only does capital underutilization occur due to hoarding money essentially, but NEVER using it (only the banks do, & we've SEEN what happens then, & we foot the bill via "bailouts" for their fuckups), but those 1% hoarders ALONE could never, EVER, spend as much as the masses would (if that money was spread about MORE evenly).
APK
P.S.=> Heck - Even Mr. Bill Gates KNOWS this (hence his will only giving his kids 2 million each & rest goes back to society in foundations etc. & researches + grants he's giving), & SO DOES THE HEIR TO THE JOHNSON & JOHNSON PHARMACEUTICAL EMPIRE also (who did a documentary on this very thing & HE'S JUST A KID but one who realizes HIS family & those like them, ARE a huge part of the problem due to capital underutilization) - that is another part of what your fine post missed (which was not much, yet QUITE a lot)... apk
Wow, what is it like to know better than everybody else what's best for them? I sure with I was as omniscient as you.
The law of supply and demand states that as prices increase, demand decreases. Since wages are nothing more that prices for labor, higher prices (labor rates) will reduce demand for labor. While some companies may be able to raise prices to offset the increased wage rates, many cannot and will result in fewer employees and/or perhaps companies going out of business.
This is economics, not math. Several months ago, Peter Schiff went to a Walmart and ask how many customer thought that raising the wages of Walmart employees to $15.00 per hour was a good idea. Everyone agreed that it was. Then he asked them to add more to the cost of their purchases to pay for the increases. Everyone refused.
A good look at the problem: http://mises.org/daily/6765/The-High-Cost-of-Minimum-Wages
Come on, $15/hour isn't a living wage unless you are in corporations' back pockets! It needs to be at least $75/hour to be a living wage for a family of four!
What is wrong with these people? They must just be a cover to keep wages low for people; they obviously do not care about a real wage.
Thank you for a textbook example of the slippery slope fallacy
Funnily enough, his "slippery slope" is a reality already, or have you forgotten the recent initiative in Switzerland that tried to create a maximum wage?
(luckily, the voters rejected it)
Its people that arent paying any attention that so often call things "slippery slopes" when in reality the slope isnt just slippery, there is also someone pushing you down it.
"His name was James Damore."
$15 per hour is barely a livable wage currently; there's no way it will be in 2021.
$15/hour is approximately $30,000 per year. If you can't figure out how to live on $30,000 per year then you are utterly clueless and/or spoiled. No it won't be a posh lifestyle but it's certainly enough to get by and it will be in 6.5 years too baring economic catastrophe.
There's always excuses not to pay better wages.
What if..
What if businesses stopped the endless cycle of increases prices of goods sold ?
What if medical care charged for actual care and not shaking down the sick for all they could grab ?
What if towns and cities stopped increasing taxes ?
What if business stopped sending jobs overseas ?
Did anyone notice that even while there was a melt-down of the economy and millions of jobs were cut, prices of goods still increased ?
What if prices of everything came down ?
Only then would low wage earners also at least eat and pay rent.
Today, $15 per hour still sucks
In NJ $30 per hour still isn't much to live on unless you still live with mom and dad.
You've posted this particular argument under two sock puppets, and now as an AC. Stop it. You've been refuted every time.
Let's see if it sticks...
Incidentally, it's just been mandated that Ontario's minimum wage will go up to $11 from $10.25. Nice to see the peons slowly catching up to inflation right before it takes off again.
Raising Walmart's minimum by ~50% would result in 1.1% price increases
Which is complete bullshit if you actually understand accounting. (Disclosure - I am a cost accountant in my day job) You'll note that the article you linked to has no actual analysis attached. If you actually look at Walmart's financial statements and information about their financials you would find that Walmart has around 2.2 million employees with an average unburdened wage of $12.83. That means they pay around $55 Billion in wages each year which amounts to around 15% of their costs. That means that if you increase wages by 50% you would be adding $27.5 Billion in cost to the company each year which is significantly greater than the 2014 Net profit. Increasing wages by 50% would make Walmart instantly unprofitable.
I'm not even counting the cost of lost sales from the increased prices or the increased burden (overhead) costs that come with paying higher wages. So no, the effect would be FAR greater than 1.1%. You might want to actually check your sources instead of just accepting uninformed (or disingenuous) assertions at face value. I don't have any problem with increasing the minimum wage but don't be stupid about what the impact might be.
Where the neighborhood of Fremont has a statue of Lenin, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin,_Seattle) and people have voted in an openly-socialist council woman (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/seattles-socialist-councilwoman-on-why-capitalism-offers-nothing-for-young-people/).
It's trendy up there... (http://www.socialism.com/drupal-6.8/seattle)
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
What business hires employees they don't need? If you lay people off because the minimum wage is raised, who takes over the work those people did?
Here's a contrived example to illustrate the point.
Let's say that Acme Inc has a low-skill job that can be performed equally well by either by a human or by a machine. Should Acme hire a worker to perform this job, or purchase a machine?
Answer: it depends on which costs more. Let's say that over the expected lifetime of the machine, the costs to operate it (purchase, maintenance, electricity, etc.) nets out to $15 per hour. Let's say that hiring a worker to perform the job costs $14.50 per hour at the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (including taxes and benefits and whatnot).
I actually run a business, and for me, I'd much rather hire a worker at $14.50 per hour than buy the machine at $15 per hour because while the machine really would only be able to perform the task that it was designed to perform, a human being is much more versatile and can be trained and can grow with my business.
But now we raise minimum wage to $15 per hour, which is really $30 per hour once you get done with taxes and benefits. As a business owner, this tradeoff looks very different to me. Now the employee costs twice what the machine costs. While I'd generally prefer to have an employee over a machine, in this case, I'd have to buy the machine and not hire the worker. I mean, it's twice the cost if I hire someone. I've got a family to feed. Not happening.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Minimum wage is intended as a starting point. Not where you stay and live the rest of your life. When you've proven yourself worth more than minimum wage you go work somewhere else if the company doesn't recognize your abilities. All raising minimum wage does is increase the cost of doing business to pay employees who want to do the bare minimum. The rich don't care because they just raise prices to cover it. It's the middle class that takes it in the shorts.
A 5% increase in the minimum wage could easily be 20% increase in costs.
I'm an accountant and that is pretty much nonsense. A 5% increase in wages cannot result in a >5% increase in costs. In the real world this is true even factoring in overhead because wages typically are significantly less than 100% of total cost. It would be correct to say that a 5% increase in wages could result in a 20% (or more) decrease in profit - that is certainly possible, particularly in a low margin business.
Who are their customers? If their customers are people who would get a raise with minimun wage, or people who would get a cut of minimun wage earners money they might actually be better off, as more people would be able to afford their product.
Out of mod points, just as I needed them.
Seattle and the internet, where facts are a hindrance to 'progress'.
No brain, no pain.
Apologists are boring too. His argument would only be fallacious if it weren't exactly what is being proposed by the left today. Obama: "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
Even if prices end up increasing by 10% but people's income increases by 20% then those people will be able to afford more items (and useful ones, like food and clothing)
And how exactly do you propose to ensure that people's income increases by more than prices? It's entirely possible for prices to increase 20% and income to go up only 10%. Inflation is significantly independent of whatever arbitrary wage level you desire. You can raise wages all you want but prices can just as easily rise faster than wages as they can slower.
Missed that in my econ class.
Guess I don't have enough sole.
No brain, no pain.
Ordinarily. But Walmart is the 900-lb gorilla. It's more like their competitors have to drop expenses to compete with Walmart.
Not that much. Walmart is the price leader but the margin of their lead isn't huge. Target and several others are pretty close and it wouldn't take much to make Walmart's prices higher than some of their biggest competitors.
Someone pushing you down it? Reminds me of my boss. He made $10 million back a couple of yeara, and in order to make a little more money, he's stealing some of my minimum wage because it's just not fair that someone should be paid for the hours they work. You want to bitch and moan about being forced to do unfair things, try not being paid for half your fucking working week. That cunt ripped me off by about $2k in a couple of months, while violating about half a dozen other basic rights - even human rights - and if I kick up a stink, I'll be fired immediately.
Here's the problem with using the slippery slope fallacy here. Slippery slope fallacy is based on rational arguments to define relation between events. Humans are fundamentally irrational. Since the GP is posting about something dealing with human behavior, you can't make any counter argument based on rational arguments. The use of rationality when talking about human behavior is a classic straw man. It's valid for a lot of systems, but not for anything dealing with humans.
Psychology is the perfect example of this. It attempts to rationally define human behavior. And it fails miserably at it. The only thing that can be said about human behavior is that its predictably irrational. One given person will consistently behave in a similar way, but without a history of that individuals behavior, it becomes nearly impossible to predict what that behavior will be.
As such, though you personally may not want to make that series of steps he describes and may not even be able to conceive that it could happen, that sort of behavior has been witnessed in the past. And if one person has done it, though you cannot rationally explain how events would lead to it happening, doesn't actually disqualify it as a slippery slope fallacy.
Basically, what I'm saying is, don't use an argument based on logical rationality on a fundamentally irrational system.
I've often suspected (since you noted MS) that Windows 8's 'fiasco" is some attempt to "gentrify" the value of MS actually - I don't & can't SEE how the dolt who designed this 'smartphone interface' for it can justify HOW they couldn't see it's like telling someone, on the car they've driven for years/decades etc., that NOW you'll have to use crane controls instead of a steering wheel, brakes, & gas pedal you ordinarily used - because "we know what's good for you" (yea, riiiiggghhhtt) - you can't SELL people what they don't want - that'a a BUSINESS RULE practically... & IF they couldn't see that? THEY DO NOT BELONG IN LEADERSHIP OF BUSINESS ROLES... no, something stinks here & I do truly suspect what I stated above (on gentrification of MS). I mean, seriously - how HARD would it have been, during installation on a PC, to give a user an option to use the CLASSIC desktop we've all used for decades, OR this new smartphonish interface? It's not, trust me, I am & have been a developer for decades.
Anyhow/anyways:
Those midrange folks - yes, they're overpaid... especially mgt. (& yes, I've served in THAT capacity for years myself, leading a HUGE retail chain in loss prevention figures out of 218 store units, LARGE ones) - but, they're not as big a problem as the 1%'er group, by a longshot... but, agreed, that too, is a problem (in their overinflated payrates to be lapdogs to "boards of directors" who are usually owners, or large stockholders or their reps).
I read a figure once, that in the 60's-70's, the avg. CEO's pay was something like (correct me if I am off/wrong) 30x the payrate of the lowest paid worker... what is it now?
3 million++ times it, or more? You tell me... it's that ludicrous, & I certainly do NOT see them curing AIDS (or something magnificent that *MIGHT* deserve that kind of compensation... heck, people who DO things of that nature, that are THAT good? Only get a NOBEL prize @ most & that's not a BiLLIONS DOLLAR A DAY PAY!).
APK
P.S.=> Any idiot can see this (I did in 1984 as a college freshman in my Macro Economics class: Prof. was telling us "the service economy is the future"... bullshit - I told him then, way back then? THIS TODAY WOULD BE THE RESULT... & I was just a kid!) - & when you send jobs offshore (to control the SINGLE MOST EASIEST COST CENTER TO CONTROL, payrolls & benefits packages)? You kill a paying consumer, possibly forcing them to welfare/the public dole, etc. & then also remove them from being a taxpayer (if home owner that loses his home) & then also this kills businesses, small ones first - they lose customers? They 1st raise prices to compensate for their overheads in supplies, taxes, etc. - things like restaurants, bars, movie theaters (fun stuff, not necessities like food, shelter, power, water, etc.) - THIS is the signal, the 1st one... next? HyperInflation (see Greece on that note)...Personally? When Alan Greenspan QUIT?? I think HE realized, and so did the "super-wealthy", that it's ALL GOING TO FALL DOWN in FLAMES, & soon... look @ what they're buying now: Gold, & LAND usually (the most valued things that TYPICALLY don't lose a lot of value IF ever, since they're finite commodities & there are no "GOLD & LAND" factories)... they're grabbing ALL THEY CAN. while they can. while the grabbing's still good, & before the shit hits the fan... apk
June 2021 Seattle, WA. McDonald's today announced the closure of its last franchise in Seattle. Seattle City Council says its shocked and has no idea why.
Why not worry more about the value of our dollar? The higher the value the more you can buy with it. But that doesn't fit the fuzzy math narrative now does it?
Increasing the minimum wage is a zero gain situation (except for the government as they will get an increase in taxable income for a while).. The more the worker costs the more companies will replace them with automation.. We've seen it in the auto industry, grocery stores... What's next? Fast food chains..
Did you know that we actually have done economic studies that show the impact of raising the minimum wage, and how little it actually helps the impoverished? According to a study published in the Southern Economic Journal in 2010, raising the federal minimum wage from then $7.25 to $9.50 would only benefit11.3% of those living in poverty, if you ignore any possible negative repercussions. However, coupled with negative employment effects, the conclusion is that it'd be a net loss.
I haven't seen a study yet that looked at raising the rates over 100% to $15, but I suspect that'd it'll end up even worse.
One of the concerns is that new unskilled workers - high schoolers and college kids - will be disproportionally targeted. After all, if your employment costs double, you can't risk someone with no proven work history when there's older, experienced individuals with responsibilities who can't afford to mess up a job around.
Another impact is that non-national chain stores will be severely impacted. Sole proprietorships - the Ma and Pa stores of mythical Main Street USA - will take great hits. These businesses usually lack the flexibility to provide employment as a loss-leader, and often don't have the option of doubling their employment budget. They'll have to make do with less, or simply not operate as a business.
So where's the fix?
What a lot of this comes down to is what I feel is an incorrect assumption; that minimum wage jobs are life-long careers, and that we intend for someone to work as an unskilled laborer for their entire life. The Brookings institute did a study/a - which does not prove causation, you know the drill - that showed that if a person could graduate highschool, get a full time job, and avoid marriage until after 21, they had only a 2% chance of living below the poverty line. In other words, analyzing the current population, that 15-20% that are living below the poverty line, 98% of them did not do at least one of those things.
There's heavy selection bias here, where the lifestyles that lead to success may coincidentally include these 3 goals, but that's part of the point.
We need to focus on education and long term planning - especially financial - and encourage a strong work ethic. Reducing the ability for highschool-aged folks to get jobs is almost the direct opposite direction. We need to focus on providing a path to skilled labor, blue or white collar, and realize that unskilled labor is primarily the domain of those just entering the workforce, not someone who's been in it for years.
2. Few will want to work full time at $15, because it will mean that they lose SNAP eligibility.
Assuming they work full time, but I see your point.
No beer and no TV make Homer something something
We could sit here and just theorize about what's going to happen but...this is a rare clear cut chance to see the effects of an above estimated living wage minimum wage. Who else is excited? Maybe we can learn from what goes wrong and apply a modified technique to cities with similar demographics?
We're all STEM workers here. Where's the excitement?
No beer and no TV make Homer something something
Demand for people to automate things just increased in Seattle.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
Newsflash... Seattler's are the nation's least obese. Seattle City Council claims it was due to the lack of McDonalds in the area.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
That's basic economics. The wage goes up, but prices only have to go up a tiny fraction due to the distributed source of paying for that wage. It's not this 1 for 1 that people think, it never has been and it never will be. That argument is brought out every single time min wage is increased, and it gets proven wrong every single time.
The math has been done to prove in order to raise McDonalds workers wage to 15/hour, the price of a big mac would only need to go up by 43 cents. Thats all.
Yes, we all took a logic class in college. However, apparently your instructor/professor failed to mention the difference between a causal chain and slippery slope. By your arbitrary assessment we are no longer entitled to have foresight? Slippery slope or not there are REAL consequences to doing this. I applaud Seattle for running the experiment for us.
You underestimate the malleability of technology in that it can be applied to any and every human problem imaginable. Automation is unstoppable unless its existence is forcibly restricted (a good or bad idea is for you to decide).
Either a company pays someone to flip burgers what they think flipping burgers is worth, or they make robots. Either a company pays someone at the register what they think cashiers are worth, or they automate. Do not assume that just because you and I would rather people do the jobs, that they can not be automated.
I would rather see a (hopefully smiling...) face when checking out of a grocery store or buying a burger at McDonalds than the terminal of a machine, but I somberly accept that there may come a time when that lifestyle disappears because, contrary to what you say, they will not go out of business if they stop paying someone to flip burgers or bag groceries.
I think this best explains what will happen: http://i0.wp.com/www.theminorityreportblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/10313216_10152126438924072_8834428450207680858_n.png?resize=198%2C300
You know when reality sets in when people in Seattle order pizza and the delivery charge has been jacked up to around $10 and or the cost of pizza has jumped up dramatically and don't expect to see it for 90 minutes. When you are forcing labor cost to double on a business that operates on 5% profit, something is going to have to give. In the end, it's the consumer that has to shoulder the burden of labor costs if a business is going to remain open. It will be interesting to see just how many companies will go out of business when it becomes clear to the owners that it's just not worth their stress to keep something operational when the employees are making as much as they are.
(Wow, this got long...)
When minimum wage became the big issue, with all the protests, I thought back when I made minimum wage. I flipped burgers and live in a house with 4 friends. Sure I couldn't afford rent and food at minimum wage, but I could afford 1/5th rent and food and have plenty left over. My friends (who also worked the same McJob) saved money, a couple bough used cars. We had every game system, a great stereo, I had a top of the line computer. We had enough and some luxury items. I thought back then and how much I made. I adjusted my wage with inflation and it came to...... $6.52/hr. WHAT? wait a sec, all those protesters with signs said if I adjusted for minimum wage, it would be 10.75/hr! What gives???
So I grabbed every minimum wage since it's start and adjusted each one for minimum wage. Here it is (Note: I did this 3-4 months ago, there could be more inflation now):
Year: Wage then -> Adjusted to 'today' (3-4 months ago)
1955: $0.75 -> $6.55
1956: $1.00 -> $8.60
1957: $1.00 -> $8.32
1958: $1.00 -> $8.09
1959: $1.00 -> $8.04
1960: $1.00 -> $7.90
1961: $1.15 -> $9.00
1962: $1.15 -> $8.91
1963: $1.25 -> $9.56
1964: $1.25 -> $9.43
1965: $1.25 -> $9.28
1966: $1.25 -> $9.02
1967: $1.40 -> $9.80
1968: $1.60 -> $10.75 $10.20
1970: $1.60 -> $9.65
1971: $1.60 -> $9.24
1972: $1.60 -> $8.95
1973: $1.60 -> $8.43
1974: $2.00 -> $9.49
1975: $2.10 -> $9.13
1976: $2.30 -> $9.46
1977: $2.30 -> $8.88
1978: $2.65 -> $9.51
1979: $2.90 -> $9.34
1980: $3.10 -> $8.80
1981: $3.35 -> $8.62
1982: $3.35 -> $8.12
1983: $3.35 -> $7.87
1984: $3.35 -> $7.54
1985: $3.35 -> $7.28
1986: $3.35 -> $7.15
1987: $3.35 -> $6.90
1988: $3.35 -> $6.62
1989: $3.35 -> $6.32
1990: $3.80 -> $6.80
1991: $4.25 -> $7.30
1992: $4.25 -> $7.09
1993: $4.25 -> $6.88
1994: $4.25 -> $6.71
1995: $4.25 -> $6.52
1996: $4.75 -> $7.08
1997: $5.15 -> $7.51
1998: $5.15 -> $7.39
1999: $5.15 -> $7.23
2000: $5.15 -> $7.00
2001: $5.15 -> $6.80
2002: $5.15 -> $6.70
2003: $5.15 -> $6.55
2004: $5.15 -> $6.38
2005: $5.15 -> $6.17
2006: $5.15 -> $5.98 $6.60
2008: $6.55 -> $7.12
2009: $7.25 -> $7.90
2010: $7.25 -> $7.78
2011: $7.25 -> $7.54
2012: $7.25 -> $7.39
2013: $7.25 -> $7.28
2014: $7.25 -> $7.25
Now you see, the 10.75 is the highest value, in 1968. Claiming that should be the standard is as intellectually dishonest as claiming the lowest value ($5.98/hr) should be the standard. The median would be $7.78, and the average would be $7.94. A fair minimum wage increase would be in that rage. Last time we raised minimum wage in 2009, there was no issue... because it was with in that median-average rage. It was fair.
Minimum wage jobs are not meant to careers. They are entry level jobs for teens and young adults. Majority of minimum wage workers are just starting out. As you gain experience you become worth more to an employer and you should make more. If you aren't, look for a new job. Early in my adult life, I switched jobs every 1-2 years. Each job paid better than the previous.
There will always be somebody at the bottom. The young person who just starts out doesn't have anything. Some have debts, like college loans, so they have a negative self-worth. As we gain skills and earn more, our worth goes up. People love to tout the "Wealth inequality" but the better picture is "Income Mobility". What happens to those in the bottom 20%... From 1996 to 2005, over 50% of the people in the bottom 20% moved up to a higher bracket. In just 10 years, most moved up. Now why has the bracket increased in size if everybody is moving up? The bottom is always filled with new people entering the work force. The 9 year old in 1996 is now in the work force in 2005.
Also, when peop
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners.
... it hasn't been implemented yet. Rather than actually implement a $15 an hour minimum wage, they made it a slow and laborious process. The "livable" wage being spoken of will not "implement" for years.
...
Whether or not it's a "livable" wage aside
I wish I could get all the credit at my job for implementing something by saying I will and agreeing to do it 10 years from now. Only in the government
$15 for working at McBurgerWorld?
Pfft.
Watch a round of automation go in and take jobs away.
Hell, watch hiring come to a standstill firings/layoffs skyrocket as employers clean house and work with staffing at the most minimal levels they can get away with.
Oh, and benefits? What benefits? There are none anymore. You're making $15/hour, pay for them yourself!
Oh. Did we mention a little thing called "inflation"? Have fun paying $5 for a gallon of milk.
Oh yes, and pretty much every business that's mobile enough is going to pack themselves up and move out of the city as fast as they can.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Lets think this through, shall we? What this actually translates to is a pay cut for everyone else, who isn't suddenly going to have their salary adjusted to match the increase to minimum wage workers.
To top it off, ALL the prices in the area will go up so that the businesses don't lose any money while consuming the increase given to minimum wage workers.
This is pretty stupid in ever aspect other than getting the bottom of the barrel voters and ultra-liberal idiots that care more about looking like they are doing something useful than actually understanding and doing something useful.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
While that doesn't sound like a lot by itself, it's quite significant when compared to the price of the item in question.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If they actually implement this, nobody will be able to afford to visit Seattle anymore let alone live there. Raising the minimum wage does more harm to the economy than good. Prices will go up, Unemployment will go up. Businesses will close. Cost of living in general will go up. If/when this happens, their census will definitely go down. The idea that raising a minimum wage will make better living conditions for those making minimum wage has been proven to be false every time the nation has raised it. A single city raising it will be even worse.
Nobody gets rich by having clean floors, or mowed lawns, or bagged groceries. However, these are examples of tasks that arguable have to be done by someone, and the cost of not having them done can, at least in some cases, be argued to be greater than $15/hr.
Bagged groceries? Over here not only do you bag your own groceries, it's all self checkout. Four lines watched by one staff member to verify IDs and deal with coupons. If we had a $15/hr minimum wage I could see them turning four more lines into self checkouts.
Nobody got rich pumping gas either, and that's why in 48 states we have to pump our own.
we should have community college with trades as well at K-12 pricing point or at least some small fees.
Well, considering just by how much the wage goes up (how much is it? Triple? Quadruple?)....
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
what about a CEO / executive X lowest worker pay cap / tax?
Where the CEO / executive can only make X times the pay of the lowest worker or a tax on pay over that?
Also will rules to stop subcontractors abuse
Interestingly enough, the Swiss voted against creating a ~$25 (Ã18) minimum wage. Their reasoning? It's not enough. From the article:
While there is no formal minimum wage, median income in Switzerland is $37 an hour and 90 percent of Swiss make more than the proposed minimum wage. Switzerland has a 3.2 percent unemployment rate, the second lowest in Europe behind Liechtenstein.
Seems like we could learn something.
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
The idea that raising the minimum wage will help people is baffling.
A business is actually a rather simple thing.
Sales - Costs = Profit.
If you increase costs, what alternatives does a business owner have?
Of course, the first assumption by the left is that the idle rich (ie anyone who owns a business) can just accept that their profits are lower. Except, this is based on some sort of cognitive dissonance. IF a business owner is likely to be reasonable enough to take the bite from their profit, then they are already likely paying their workers reasonably and taking a reasonable profit. If they are the exploitative sort of business owner that's largely assumed by higher minimum-wage advocates, it's a dead certainty that they won't take the bite in their profits, they'll do something else.
So what else can they do?
They can increase sales without increasing costs. They're already likely selling as much as they possibly can, so that's out.
So all they can do to maintain profits is to CUT COSTS...fire whomever they can.
Automate what they can (higher capital costs, but lower long-term costs and likely better efficiencies...and no health/pension costs either).
-Styopa
Well, considering just by how much the wage goes up (how much is it? Triple? Quadruple?)....
Raising the minimum wage to $15 three years from now would be about a 50% increase in the wage.
A $0.43 increase in the price of a Big Mac is around a 14% increase in non-premium areas (e.g., not Manhattan). I suspect the overall increase in McDonalds prices would be about 30%, since the Big Mac can't absorb as much increase as some other items. For example, the "premium" sandwiches might be able to move 20%, while lower-priced items might move 50%.
I haven't read all of the replies but a lot of you are missing an important point.... If I only have minimum wage employees and the minimum wage increases from $10/hr to $15/hr (50% increase) I would not increase my monthly payroll budget by that unless I wanted to obliterate my bottom line. Sure I might increase my payroll just enough to maintain an acceptable level of customer service but people start businesses to profit and make money. Not to provide for others. Being able to provide jobs for others is a perk of running a successful business. That will happen less if the minimum wage makes having a successful business more difficult.
Washington implements a state income tax....:)
I haven't read all of the replies but a lot of you are missing an important point.... If I only have minimum wage employees and the minimum wage increases from $10/hr to $15/hr (50% increase) I would not increase my monthly payroll budget by that unless I wanted to obliterate my bottom line. Sure I might increase my payroll just enough to maintain an acceptable level of customer service but people start businesses to profit and make money. Not to provide for others. Being able to provide jobs for others is a perk of running a successful business. That will happen less if the minimum wage makes having a successful business more difficult!
I didn't even mention unfunded liabilities, which are estimated conservatively at about $90 Trillion (with a T) and more aggressively at $120-200T. Here's a tid-bit from only one of them, Social Security, not from a right-wing paper or blog, but from the official Social Security website's actuary report. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
Social Security’s Disability Insurance (DI) program satisfies neither the Trustees’ long-range test of close actuarial balance nor their short-range test of financial adequacy and faces the most immediate financing shortfall of any of the separate trust funds. DI Trust Fund reserves expressed as a percent of annual cost (the trust fund ratio) declined to 85 percent at the beginning of 2013, and the Trustees project trust fund depletion in 2016, the same year projected in the last Trustees Report.
Wanna check Medicare/Medicaid? Federal pensions? State pensions? Food stamps? All overloaded beyond capacity. And the only answer you get from anyone is to keep voting for the same people and keep doing the same thing.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
I think it will hit teenagers (and other unskilled workers) the most, but for different reasons.
There are a number of college degrees (for example: social work) where the average starting salary ends up being less than $15/hour and unemployment is still pretty high. By raising the minimum wage, Seattle is increasing the competition for those minimum wage jobs. If you were an employer filling a minimum wage position, would you rather hire a high-school dropout or a college graduate?
Unfortunately, I think this is going to hurt the very people this is aimed to help. Under skilled and under educated people who would normally be able to find a minimum wage job are going to have to compete against a larger pool of job seekers for a fewer number of minimum wage positions.
Well, that might be the reason why a McD meal costs about 7 bucks around these areas... then again, if I couldn't afford it, I'd probably abstain. I can't imagine why McD raising its prices would affect me in any way. If it gets too expensive, simply avoid it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Thanks for your monumentally imbecilic comments.
The price of all foods will go up.
Plus, we don't need more idiots advising us how to live our lives.
So you would rather have people working at menial jobs that don't pay them enough to get food/clothing/shelter (never mind medical care) so that you can have nice things? Nice things like a person to clean up after you have eaten that is different from the person you told what you wanted to eat.
New soap opera entitled, "as business goes away"
Why should anyone have to work 2-3 jobs just to survive when corporate profits are at an all time high.
People aren't just working 2-3 jobs because of minimum wages, they're doing so because of shitty hours. Even if you had a $25/hr or even $50/hr job, it's not much use if you're only getting 5h/week. A lot of "minimum" wage jobs aren't just for crappy pay, they're also for hours that barely make them worth working at all.
Where I live, you could get by on minimum wage if you work full-time (say 35-40h/week).
You wouldn't be living in a huge house with a 60" TV, but it would cover rent in a decent place, food, and a little bit to spare. If you're in a relationship and both working minimum, then things would not be too bad (shared rent, etc).
The problem: almost *nobody* offers full-time hours. A lot of places offer 4-5h/day (and then a 6-7 day work-week), and more often than not on a variable schedule. That means that those at the bottom of the wage pool have to balance multiple jobs, trying to resolve conflicts in hours, and with little to no free time. It's a *huge* drain on quality-of-life, and an oft-ignored issue in comparison to wage.
You forgot to figure in that when the minimum wage goes up all of your suppliers have more overhead and pass that on to you. So your cost of supplies increases as well. When you buy a Big Mac, you're paying for the entire supply chain that got the thing to you. Sometimes that chain is reasonably long and you have to cover the cost of every step of it.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
With the minimum wage bump, do other fields that do not make much more than that but require some sort of specialized training, etc get a bump also?? Some fields don't pay much more than this.
But deflation makes the rich richer, trap people in debt and the banks and rent seekers are the ones profiting on their end of that relationship.
The ideology of low inflation (0 to 2%) and sustained growth (3 to 5%) is just that, and you're getting fucked if the wages stay at 0% or even -1%. A situation of high inflation and wages increasing with inflation every year (even welfare) is actually better for the poor and working class, though it may have its own problems.
...you just made everyone who already made $15-$20 part of the low wage earners, and slapped them in the face.
(a fry cook does NOT deserve a wage that is equal to teacher/solider/fireman/police officer.)
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Here in Australia, the minimum wage is 15 a hour, our parking lots look fine, and your full of shit. Maybe people will think twice before wasting another persons time doing trivial shit if they cost 15 a hour.
A formulation of a maximum wage can be than in a specific business, the top wage paid to someone can't be more than 20 times the lowest wage :D. That's an indirect separate minimum wage. But of course you would immediately game around it by bringing in contractors etc. and it could become a big stinking mess unless that can be possibly also accounted for..
A separate minimum wage for a large business?, or [more generally!] for some trades in some businesses.. yeah, negociating that would be the role of labor unions.
On the one hand, there are the issues of passing costs on to consumers. Elimination of many jobs at the margins of being economically viable, etc, etc.
On the other hand, our transit system just got turned down at the voting booth for a major cash infusion via higher priced annual car tabs. And they started howling about eliminating critical services and routes. Now that will be a non-issue. Simply increase the price on the fare box. You make $15 per hour. So put your $5 bill in for the bus ride and shut up.
Have gnu, will travel.
Or have you and the person who modded you insightful forgotten how to do math?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
> significant when compared to the price of the item in question.
Bullshit. Yesterday here in Seattle, I ordered a $1 chicken sandwich at Jack in the Box. The $15/hour that employee is soon going to make is insignificant compared to the $1 I paid. Republicans like you are always bad at math. Only a tiny portion of that $1 plus tax I spent was spent on labor.
Minimum wages only help people with jobs. They increase the incentive to automate. And if 2014 wasn't late enough, these laws won't take effect for years.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You've obviously never worked in food. That's all they do is whine about labor.
The subject says it all.
Never has there been so many non-emergency hand outs.
Washington state is going to eventually lose many, many jobs.
But hey, then they can go on a myriad of social programs. - end game.
: (
No one hires workers they don't need. But who has money they weren't really using? If you increase my payroll expenses by 5%, I am going to have to lay off 5% of my staff unless I can something else to cut. The remaining 95% will be told that they will be working 5% harder, or they will get replace by someone willing to do the extra 5% more, and with people being laid off, it will be even easier to replace them. The people who work for me are not, nor should they, working to their maximum possible potential. 5% more means the work just got a little harder, but not impossible.
Meanwhile, for businesses that simply can't figure out how to keep their payroll the same, they will have to do something else, such as raise the cost of their goods. Resulting in inflation, making that extra 5% get even smaller. Raising minimum wage doesn't simply cause more money to appear in the economy. What it does is cause the people who worked their way up out of minimum to be that much closer to the minimum again. It's a slap in the face to these people.
Of course you conveniently overlook the fact that (arithmetic) "average" is a relatively meaningless term in this context, median would be far more relevant.
You can run the same arithmetic using federal minimum wage and you'll find the logic of it does not change at all.
Besides which, even if we assume a 50% increase in the minimum wage translated to a 50% increase in total wages across the board, that still translates to only a 7.5% increase in costs. Increase prices by 7.5% and your profit margins remain the same, (and absolute profits increase, assuming volume remains constant)
You are ignoring all sorts of downstream issues. Let's assume that we increase minimum wage by 50% and that Walmart and others are able to pass the entire 7.5% cost increase on to their customers. In reality that wouldn't be possible but let's ignore that for now.
The cost of labor doesn't just increase for Walmart, it increases for the companies making the products Walmart buys from - which contrary to popular opinion is not just in China. Walmart buys a lot of domestically produced product too. That means that you essentially are providing a subsidy to overseas suppliers who do not have to share in the wage increases. So this means Walmart now has to source MORE products from outside the US and domestic manufacturers lose big. So even if Walmart doesn't have to lay off one worker by some miracle (which wouldn't happen), you lose a ton of jobs in US manufacturing - which still accounts for about 15% of employment in the US.
You also have to account for inflation. Increase wages by 50% and inflation is almost certain to increase. In terms of real purchasing power any increase you make is likely to be eaten way by inflation in short order. You also claim that Walmart's profit margins would increase which demonstrably wouldn't be true. Walmart associates might be able to buy more but the gains would be given back by the manufacturing employees that are now out of work. It's not like you can magically waive a minimum wage wand and everyone benefits with no consequences. Minimum wage laws serve a useful and important purpose but they aren't consequence free.
Jobs flipping burgers, washing dishes, checking groceries and sacking are not supposed to be for adults who have topped out and won't go any further in life, they are for kids who need to learn how to be an employee, to learn how to show up on time, and make themselves useful in the real world. Trying to turn the minimum wage into something it's not it going to push all the inexperienced kids out of the market altogether, and leave it full of washed-up has-beens who have no future anyway.
This is what you get for electing leftist idiots who think that they can fix complex economic problems with good intentions and well-meant ignorance.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023125265_teenunemploymentxml.html
Teen-employment rate sharply down in Seattle area, study says
A Brookings Institution study paints a darkening jobs picture for American youth in the late-teen years. Over the past dozen years, teen-employment rates have plunged nationwide, with the Seattle area seeing one of the steepest declines.
It is not Communism or Capitalism that is the problem. It is allowing the government to add complexity.
The more complex the rules, the more they favor the entrenched and wealthy.
Simple experiment that is like the market: Get 100 random people, you compete against each of them and see how you rate against them.
Game 1) flip a coin against each one -- a couple people may get better than 50% but unlikely very far above average. the worst unlikely that far behind.
Game 2) tic-tac-toe against each one. -- again some people could be good at it, and get more wins, the worst will lose, but everyone knows how to play.
Game 3) Speed Chess against each one -- NOW the few people who know the rules will win most of the games. there may be someone who wins them all.
The mass of people who do not know the rules will be stuck at the bottom.
The more complex the rules, the worse it is for the average person.
Now if only that was my problem. The market favors effiency, if the company can't provide a service people want to pay for at what it determines it must charge then why should we prevent a more effient player from suplanting them, large or small.
This is why your typical store owner doesn't have a kid washing down the sidewalk at the start of the day, and why the parking lot at the strip mall near your house looks like the inside of a dumpster, until the minimal cleaning work by local ordinance can be carried out by a street sweeper service that hits the parking lots of the local businesses as little as legally possible to get away with.
I live in NJ, USA, but I recently went on a trip to Japan. One of the things that I noticed while I was there was how surprisingly clean everything was. How there were always people outside sweeping sidewalks. You never see that type of thing where I live. You claim it's because of our high minimum wage pricing these jobs out of the market.
Japan's minimum wage is at least $8.40/hour (or maybe even $10.90/hr, it's not clear). No, the reason our communities look like dumpsters is because that's how much we value them.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Wait a minute, increased prices? I thought Walmart had become instantly unprofitable from the wage hike because they didn't increase prices?
Don't be daft. Of course Walmart would increase prices if the minimum wage were increased just like everyone else. If they had to increase wages 50% UNILATERALLY they would instantly be unprofitable because they couldn't raise prices in that instance. The effect of big minimum wage increase would be less direct but no less economically damaging however. See below.
Increase burden (overhead) costs? Do they need to upgrade their payroll computers to crunch bigger numbers?
Increase wages = increase payroll tax burden, increased benefits costs and increased insurance costs. If you pay an employee more you will incur a larger burden cost for non-wage expenses. For instance unemployment insurance, disability insurance, etc are all based on the wages of the employee. Companies incur very real tax burdens that the employees don't usually see because the company pays for them. Typically the burden rate for most companies is somewhere between 30-50% on top of their salary/wages for each employee. For my company the direct labor burden rate hovers around 42%. We pay our assembly workers a wage (call it $10 to keep the math simple) and then we have to add 42% of that on top to get to the real cost of their employment. This accounts for tax, IRA/401K contributions/matches, insurance, plus a host of other costs most people never really consider.
Your own math seems to set 7.5% as an upper bound, though. 7.5% higher prices for 50% higher wages seems like a fair trade to me. Would you disagree?
7.5% isn't a bound of any kind - merely an illustrative simplistic example that the real number is a LOT higher than 1.1%.
It's much more complicated than you are making it out to be. By raising the minimum wage you are increasing costs for all domestic manufacturers (and there are LOTS). This effectively is a subsidy to overseas (read China) manufacturers who do not have wage supports at the expense of domestic ones who do. Manufacturers in the US would have to either lose business or in many cases simply shut down. So to prop up Walmart associates wages you are doing so at the expense of US manufacturing workers. Since they shop at Walmart too that is revenue that Walmart isn't going to get AND you are costing people their entire paycheck to raise someone else's by 50%. Did you think the money would come with no consequence?
I could also talk about the almost certain inflation increases, increased unemployment claims, the short versus long term effects, the supply chain effects and lots more. It's NOT simply that everyone is magically better off with no downside anywhere.
$30k/year in NYC:
There is a big world outside of NYC. Try it sometime.
your ignorance of other (read: more expensive) corners of the country is funny
And your sense of entitlement isn't funny at all. Here's a crazy notion. Move somewhere less expensive until you can afford to live in the expensive location. Nothing is forcing you to remain in NYC if you can't afford it. I went to school not far from NYC and you know what? I live in a place which costs 1/4 as much for housing because spending extra money just to live in a dense city when I can't afford it is stupid.
Do you mean your parents die and you have to move out of their basement?
http://www.epi.org/publication...
Just the Big Mac or all prices for every menu item by that proportion?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Because nobody starts a business with a dream of creating jobs.
I think you hit on something here that most people gloss over when we talk about the "job creators".
Yes, most business DOES NOT want to create jobs. So why are we so concerned what they think whenever the issue of jobs come up?
I hate mowing my lawn, if I can hire someone to do it at $10/hour, I'll do it. At $15/hour I can't afford to hire someone and I'll do it myself.
Well that's just you. There are plenty of people that would look at that as worthwhile still. I've made that call myself - "Oh its a few dollars more, that sucks... but oh well, it will still be worth it" and I pay it. The net overall is probably a few lost customers, but enough extra from the ones that remain that it's still at least as much as before, if not more. This is of course speculation and depends greatly on type of business, location, etc. But I think that example hardly "proves" anything.
My labor cost goes up by 20% so it's now more cost effective to invest in a $200k machine that it is to hire 10 people.
Can be true -- again, greatly depending on industry, etc. But now, you're going to need get that machine repaired occasionally, and call the help desk when it starts doing funny things. So now we've employed people. Jobs shifted from grass mowing to doodad repair -- and doodad repair probably pays a good deal more than mowing the grass, so a net win. Assuming we can get people trained for these new jobs.
That's the main wrinkle, and why I support cheaper/free community college training, especially for those that have been laid off and looking for a career change. We can't stop the world economy, we have to learn to evolve with it.
But it's also worth noting that the jobs that are getting destroyed are the shit jobs where you are being treated like a half-machine already. We would all be better off if all the repetitive jobs like cashier were eliminated and people could actually do jobs that they enjoy. Whether this is possible is obviously subject to debate.
Definitely I encourage everyone to do things they enjoy. The problem is most of the time, those more enjoyable jobs (and not necessarily enjoyable in the sense of being a slacker, but for example, I'm a big tech geek and math nerd and enjoy working with numbers -- but being the "numbers R&D guy" isn't typically a job offered at most companies) don't exist, or are actively laying people off.
Studies have shown much of the jobs created in the "recovery" were low-paying retail/fast-food jobs. So I *wish* we could say they were all getting destroyed and we were progressing to a more enlightened society of creative people doing awesome things like sending people to the moon, but not so. We need to find a way of making that happen though.
Oh well, I'm sure McDonalds will just close up shop. They had a pretty good run. Bummer.
Just FYI, no sock puppets. A number of people are going to share any given view and given the number of comments, it's not surprising to see the same line of argument independently presented by multiple posters. Also, your idea this is one person posting multiple times might just be an underhand way to trying to indirectly devalue the argument. Don't try that, it isn't honest.
Also, refuted - basic economics is as rigid a science as basic physics. Jobs create wealth. If the wage people are forced to pay is higher than the wealth created by the job, *no employer will offer that job*. There is no possible refutation, except with hands over eyes repeating "I see no problems".
In 2 years downtown Seattle could look like south D.C. or Mogadishu.
No more Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Arts, Space Needle and Monorail and the businesses in between.
Sea Hawks and Mariners will lead the exodus.
Not good !
Minimum wage laws are how a "civilized" society keeps business owners from hiring scabs when the union laborers are striking for higher wages.
http://www.ibtimes.com/minimum...
Nuff said.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The jobs that people do for under $15/hr still need to be done.
Not true. If every restaurant closed their doors, people would cook their own food. If every landscaping company folded, people would mow their own lawns. If the cost of cashiers is too high, self-checkout kiosks will become the norm. These jobs only exist because there is cheap labor to exploit. Make labor too expensive and the jobs will not exist.
GP says:
"eventually, they'll set the minimum and maximum wages to the same levels"
Obama said:
"I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
and you say (of GP):
"His argument would only be fallacious if it weren't exactly what is being proposed by the left today"
Do you stand by that comment? Can you see the nuance between the two statements quoted above?
Do you think saying "some people have earnings that are unreasonably low / high" (respectively 7$ an hour, a bazillion an hour), is exactly the same as saying "everybody should earn the same?". Because that's what you just wrote.
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
... try not being paid for half your fucking working week. That cunt ripped me off by about $2k in a couple of months, while violating about half a dozen other basic rights - even human rights - and if I kick up a stink, I'll be fired immediately.
Wait.. you are STILL working for 'em?
The government cannot fix your stupidity.
"His name was James Damore."
I object to the $15 minimum wage. It should be even higher, like $30. Or for that matter, why don't we make it $50 / hour, if it raises people out of poverty and makes their lives better?
Aside from supply/demand for labor, I see very little factual support for why a wage *should* be a certain level.
And you will be wrong, because what will actually happen is firms will be forced to use their employees in a higher-productivity way (through various types of investments).
That is right. The law may say that if you employ someone, you have to pay him at least $15/hr. But, the law does not say that you must employ anybody. If a given potential employee can't pull his weight at his wage, you not hire him, or if you did, you will fire him.
Ask yourself how many kids fresh out of high school are worth $15/hr? I think the number is probably less than 3%, the rest of them will be working on their basketball shot or their video game skills.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Let me clear this up. When I said for larger businesses, I meant...
If business has 12+ employees AND if business has gross annual revenue, of let's say, $2 million per year, business is subject to higher minimum wage (perhaps 1.2 times the current wage). The aim should be at bigger businesses, like McDonald's, not smaller businesses which may struggle having to pay a $15/hour wage. I think $12/hour would have been a better aim.
So who the fuck cares, because the battle will remain ongoing. This isn't even a stopgap. This is a distraction.
$15 per hour, in 2017 dollars not even 2014 dollars, will not be livable in 2021.
I guess that's okay if you want to Wal-Mart (use as verb) the world over.
I think you're reading a bit too deeply into the words and missing the overall point... there are jobs that need to be done regardless of their cost.
Fine, bagging groceries is a poor example. What about janitorial work? Someone needs to do the basic maintenance of a public or commercial building.
=Smidge=
Not true. If every restaurant closed their doors, people would cook their own food. If every landscaping company folded, people would mow their own lawns.
Hahahaha... oh wow.
Yeah, assuming that everyone is willing any able to do their own cooking and yardwork (Ha!) who's going to do property maintenance for non-residential properties? Going to take turns at the office to see who's turn it is to trim the hedges that week?
=Smidge=
I agree on the janitorial work. However, in the past decade I have seen:
-College dorm bathroom cleaning go from weekly to every other week.
-Trash and recyling emptying at the office go from daily to every other day (3 days of trash, 2 days of recycling).
-Weekly office vaccuum became monthly.
And that's *without* a minimum wage hike. I fully expect in the coming years our janitorial staff to be replaced with directions to the cleaning supply cabinet and a map to where to bring our trash to when we'd like to empty it...
Yeah, in fact I was gonna say... Headline should read: "Seattle approves 50% cut in availability of entry-level and low-skilled jobs". Because as others have pointed out, every minimal-skills job that can be eliminated *will* be. Instead of an order taker at McDonald's, there'll be a touchscreen. Self-checkout at groceries and Walmart (presently the largest single employer of the marginally-employable) will become the rule rather than the exception. And so on.
If such wage increases ever reach the ag sector, crops that now require a crew of hand-pickers will transition to crops that can be harvested by one guy on a tractor, and it'll be that much more of our fresh fruit and veggies that come from South America year-round.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Funny how the people claiming such wage increases aren't a slippery slope kinda forget that the proliferation of part-time jobs was a direct consequence of gov't making full-time workers too expensive.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It should have been $27 an hour, to keep up with changes since the 1960s.
Or the original compromise of $15 in 2015 and $22 in 2022.
I blame the Mayor.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I am just getting by on SSI and wonder what effect raising the minimum wage will have on me. I assume raising the minimum wage will translate to some degree to higher prices for many things.
How is that not an improvement. If we could automate a job that only pays $10/hr, how is it not better for society to free somebody up to do something more valuable. Why should humans be employed so cheaply? Do we not value people's time?
It seems like a solution is to just pay basic income to everybody, and stop fighting the war to ensure that people continue to dig ditches.
Here in Australia, with a decent, national minimum wage, we have to pump our own gas. Do hou believe it!? Just because some poor schlebs wanted decent compensation for their labour, I have to get out of my car and fill my own car up! This is a travesty! Bring back $2 an hour so that the poor companies can pay desperate people unliveable wages to do pointless work, I say.
Then how do you propose that those displaced workers earn a living? What jobs are they suited for? Where will those jobs come from??
Walmart gives a lot of jobs to borderline-retarded and disabled people who aren't capable of more complex work, did you realise that? What are they supposed to do if those jobs go away -- collect welfare??
And it may seem strange to you, but some people are much happier digging ditches.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
or rather, if you were typical, you would get another credit card to sustain your need for mcdonalds, have another child, lease a new car, blow your expected tax return the weekend before you get it, the week after post on facebook about "the struggle", and finally complain to your most sympathetic lawmaker that you cant support your family with your minimum-wage job
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Then how do you propose that those displaced workers earn a living? What jobs are they suited for? Where will those jobs come from??
I already said it in my post - basic income. That means you mail every person a check every month sufficient for a basic lifestyle, regardless of need. Nobody has to work to earn a living. Those who are not suited for a job will just live on that income.
Walmart gives a lot of jobs to borderline-retarded and disabled people who aren't capable of more complex work, did you realise that? What are they supposed to do if those jobs go away -- collect welfare??
And it may seem strange to you, but some people are much happier digging ditches.
And with basic income there would be no minimum wage, so if people want to dig ditches for an extra $1/hour because they enjoy the work, they can do it. As far as welfare goes - everybody will be on welfare whether they work or not.
And where does the money for this 'basic income' come from??
And even if this scheme worked, you're forgetting an important part of human nature: Most people need to feel like they're earning their way. If they're on the dole, they feel worthless (thus depressed with its attendant issues), and no amount of hobbies and leisure pursuits can change that.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And where does the money for this 'basic income' come from??
Taxes. Productivity is at an all time high.
And even if this scheme worked, you're forgetting an important part of human nature: Most people need to feel like they're earning their way. If they're on the dole, they feel worthless (thus depressed with its attendant issues), and no amount of hobbies and leisure pursuits can change that.
People can donate their time to help others, and they still can work at whatever jobs they can find. Basic income isn't about keeping people from working - it is about keeping people from losing their homes when they are out of work.
I do all kinds of productive stuff in my spare time. Why would that change if I had more of it?
I suppose this means every custodian, retail, fast food, and other $8/hr employee is going to have to fill two positions at their job while the other guy gets laid off. So what's a kid coming out of high school supposed to do for work unless he can successfully fake prior experience?