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."

Comments

Behind the curve

[TitusC3v5]

$15 per hour is barely a livable wage currently; there's no way it will be in 2021.

Re:Behind the curve

[Your.Master]

It's indexed to inflation. The value is $15 in 2017 dollars. For the sake of making this readable, I will represent the value of $15 in 2017 as $X, and the value of $15 in the year it is earned as $Y. Thus, in 2017, X = Y. After 2017, X > Y. Before 2017, X Y. X and Y might still be hard to read but I promise this was worse before I edited it, since I kept saying "$15 in 2017 dollars" for X and "$15 in contemporary dollars" for Y :).

If you look at the graph, it only converges on $X wage for all businesses by 2025.

The 2021 figure is when the last business category ( 500 employees) hits a $Y minimum wage, and minimum $X of total compensation. Eg. in 2021 those companies can count healthcare against the $X, while only actually paying $Y. But by 2025, and they still have to be ready to pay the full $X by 2025.

Re:Behind the curve

[arbiter1]

"If you raise the minimum wage so that they only need one job it will open up more positions for currently unemployed people."
Um the problem with that assessment is you assume it will open more job's and not kill them since now company has to pay more out per employee, which to make up difference means raising prices which in turn raises cost of living. As I said kill job's cause now people want a job in the city but will travel outside the city for lower prices cause people paid less hence problem just compounds itself and ends up killing job's in the city and people are right back to needing multiple job's.

Re:Behind the curve

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhap's they can get new job's selling excess apostrophe's to people in apostrophe-poor countrie's. They seem to be plentiful around here.

Re:Behind the curve

[Anonymous Coward]

This exactly.

There are ways of finding a solution to having a sustainable living wage without the drawbacks of inflation, but that largely comes back to having jobs and living spaces be in the same building. None of this driving/transiting an hour in each direction every day.

Start with the obvious: 15$/hr, and all jobs must be hired full time, only at the discretion of the hiree can an employer reduce the hours (eg voluntary unpaid time off) an employee shall agree not to work for any other company full or part time except at hobbiest/training levels (eg I could work 38/hrs/wk at a coffee shop, but could train for a better job/position by having the hours not overlap with each other.) No unpaid internships. Any internship must be paid the prevailing wage for the position they are doing work as.

Get the employees to the places they need to be: For "office" environments, the office must supply living space for any employee that does not wish to transit/commute, or they must provide the telecommuting resources. I can't tell you how much telecommuting is useful, and how redundant office buildings are. Maybe new buildings can be constructed so that they are literately partitioned as "living space | workspace" with entire companies renting out floors so they can use the meeting spaces and network resources of those floors.

But I think the real source of the problem (the one that Seattle, Vancouver BC, NYC, and San Francisco) are all stuck with is the lack of available land because of the geography. It's not cost effective to build single-family homes, in fact very few exist anymore. The average "home" is really an illegal duplex. Single family homes are routinely replaced with 8-unit townhouse/rowhomes if not replaced with condo buildings. Nobody is building affordable housing at all.

Re:Behind the curve

[immaterial]

Because wages are generally only a fraction of the cost of goods sold, raising wages doesn't result in anywhere near as much of an increase in prices. Raising Walmart's minimum by ~50% would result in 1.1% price increases.

My guess would be that a large chunk of the workforce having significantly more spending money would help most companies sell *more* product, even with a minor price increase. Why doesn't Walmart just up it's wages, if it's such an obviously good idea? It still has to compete with others who probably won't follow suit. The only way to ensure a level playing field is to set a general minimum wage that applies to everyone - and set it high enough that full-time employees can actually afford the goods and services needed to survive (and maybe even participate in the economy a bit beyond that). The Walmart CEO himself asked Congress to do this in 2006.

Re:Behind the curve

[Anonymous Coward]

The story was later corrected... the math is off and is incredibly misleading.

Re:Behind the curve

[kiddygrinder]

people who drop prices to compete with walmart are idiots, as if they could compete on price, better to compete on quality, service or image, which are all actually easily achievable in comparison to walmart.

Re:Behind the curve

[sumdumass]

Back in the 1990s, i was making $12-14 an hour rolling buritos for a restaurant chain. My wages changed if i went to a different store which is why there is a wage wiindow. Minimum wage went from 3.35 to around 5.25 or so. I only worked at minimum wage once and that was because it increased before i recieved raises.

Anyways, that was only possible because unemployment was low. We hired in kids with no work experience at $1-1.50 an hour above minimum wage just to get people in the door. With raises every 6 months, if you actually put some effort into the job, you could increase that in no time. Skilled people were hired in at even more.

The answer is not raising a minimum wage but lowering unemployment. That was the key to Clinton's "its the economy stupid". Anyone who wanted a job could get one and in most places, they could get one that paid somewhat better than minimum wage.

Minimum wage is not supposed yo be a living wage. It is not supposed to be a career goal. It is supposed to be a minimum for people with no work history so they can prove thenselves. It is a sad sign when our economy and people in it have resigned themselves to accepting the minimum and are relying on the state in order to better their careers. The answer is to lower unemployment. The people will go to whomever is paying the most and companies will have to pay more on their own out of profits in order to get and keep people. Prices don't jump either because they need to stay competitive with other companies.

Re:Behind the curve

[pla]

an employee shall agree not to work for any other company full or part time except at hobbiest/training levels

I can understand wanting the full time so companies don't dick you around with 10 hours here and 15 hours there, but why the hell would you want to outlaw contracting on the side?

An awfully lot of people pay the bills with their 9-to-5, but pay for their beer and toys with odd jobs on the weekend.

Re:Behind the curve

[cryptizard]

What the actual fuck? In the worst case, if your company somehow has 100% of their costs being labor, a 5% increase in wages would be a 5% increase in costs. It is mathematically impossible for what you say to happen.

Re:Behind the curve

[immaterial]

A 5% increase in the minimum wage could easily be 20% increase in costs.

This is mathematically nonsense. Even if a business's costs come 100% from employee wages (a mythical business that pays no rent, has no equipment, no licenses, no worker training, etc.), a 5% increase in wages is... a 5% increase in costs.

That is the worst-case scenario. You are correct that small businesses don't have the level of efficiency of Walmart - payroll is probably going to be a higher fraction of total cost. The healthcare and the service industry tends to have the worst fraction, with about 50% of costs being payroll. That includes benefits, but if we ignore that for the moment and assume it's all wages, and wages get increased 5% you're still looking at a worst-case increase in costs of 2.5%.

Re:Behind the curve

[Charliemopps]

$15 per hour is barely a livable wage currently; there's no way it will be in 2021.

and thanks for pointing out the problem with the minimum wage...

Its NEVER enough.

I'm not suggesting we do nothing about wage disparity, but the minimum wage does little to help the poor. Most of the poor don't have jobs to begin with, and raising the minimum wage will make that even worse.

Re:Behind the curve

[Mr D from 63]

I think, what you actually meant, is that a 5% increase in wages could easily result in a 20% reduction in profits. That is possible, although I am not sure it would, but it would still only be a 5% cost increase (may a bit more if you include tax considerations).

Re:Behind the curve

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with trying to lower unemployment in general instead of raising the minimum wage is that there will always be people who it doesn't benefit. Maybe one town has a specific problem that causes more unemployment than the national average, or perhaps an individual has some disability or problem in their past (can't get a good reference) that stops the market working for them.

Employers will take any opportunity to lower wages, but employees can't switch jobs as easily. Employees need stability, while employers looking for low skilled labour can take people on short term contracts and then get rid of them if they can find someone cheaper. Getting unemployment down helps but at the bottom end it isn't enough on its own.

Re:Behind the curve

[Mr D from 63]

The story was later corrected... the math is off and is incredibly misleading.

That won't stop anyone from using it.

Re:Behind the curve

[Shadow of Eternity]

You realise costco pays employees so well wallstreet analysts accuse them of "excessive benevolence" right?

Re:Behind the curve

[DaveV1.0]

You shouldn't be taking retail for your example. Basically, you are engaging the fallacy of cherry picking. A retail location has many products and few employees so the increase per item would be small. What about the service and manufacturing sectors? Let's assume a current $10.00/hr minimum wage and an increase to $15.00/hr

What happens when the manufacturing cost increases by 50% to 100%? Remember, if someone is making $14.00/hr and you give the janitor a $5.00/hr wage to $15.00, your worker is going to want $19.00/hr or more.

Most restaurants have a very small profit margin, so what will happen when employee costs increase by 50%? Does the owner try to sell? Just shut it down and leave? Increase prices by 50% to 100%? If the cooks are making 1/3 more than the dishwasher and the dishwasher suddenly starts making $15.00/hr, how much will the cooks wants $18,00/hr or $20.00/hr?

Sure, it is a $5.00/hr increase for minmum wage but it is a 50% increase in wage. What if the other employees demand a 50% wage increase as well? What if the union contract demands it? Suddenly, that 14.00/hr employee is making $21.00/hr.

Re:Behind the curve

[DaveV1.0]

The problem with fixing the price of a commodity at a high rate is that one hurts the consumers of the commodity. That is really what you are doing. You are fixing the price of labor at an artificially high price expecting that the increase in price won't be passed on to everyone else.

All this will do is push up the cost of living AND give executives an excuse to fire workers and raise prices, while shutting down small business.

Re:Behind the curve

[fredprado]

That is no problem. Even the small retailers can sell other things and stop selling bread temporarily, or close doors. For the economy and the consumers it is irrelevant and what matters is that everybody is buying cheaper breads. If and when the bread price starts to go up and become worth it again more people will start making it and balance the market again.

Small retailers that want to be immune to these tides should focus in quality and service and not in undercutting prices, even because they can`t ever compete with big retailers be it in profit margins or costs.

Re:Behind the curve

[tmosley]

I don't think you understand how much regulatory compliance costs are for startups. I was working a startup vitamin manufacturing plant and had to get a survey in order to get a permit for a new storage building. This was to "ensure that it wouldn't flood", despite the fact that the property was basically on a cliff 50 feet above a small river, and wouldn't flood even in a million year flood, and it was totally obvious from their own flood maps. That was just a single small part of the idiocy. It wound up costing so much we just gave up and used a fucking storage container to store those chemicals. Much less safe, but it was all we could afford. Could have built a nice building with fire suppression and explosion proof fixtures and lighting if it hadn't been for regulators coming in and trying to triple the price of the thing along with their continual delays.

Funny part is, this was in "business friendly" Texas. Can't imagine what would have happened if we had tried to open in some place like California.

Re:Behind the curve

[tmosley]

Perhaps you should start your own business. I'm sure you could drive him out of business by offering better wages and a better working environment.

But it's not that simple, is it? Regulations prevent the appearance of new competition, because they place a disproportionate burden on them.

Re:Behind the curve

[tmosley]

Right. Loads of people live without ANY wages, so the minimum wage really should reflect that and be zero. Why are we cutting off the lowest rungs on the ladder to success? We have record real unemployment, but we are going to make it harder to hire people? Absolute insanity. If you have a problem with you wages not buying enough, take it up with the Federal Reserve. They are the ones printing money to stuff into bankers pockets, who are in turn spending that money into the economy and driving up prices.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Nor do any number of leftists.

Re:Behind the curve

[CastrTroy]

What else can you really compete on when you're selling basics like toilet paper and laundry detergent. Walmart isn't actually that bad when it comes to service either, at least the ones I frequent. They seem to get you through the checkout line quickly. The stores are clean and well stocked. There are employees around to ask for assistance What else could you ask for? I've seen more expensive department stores run much worse. You could try to stock higher quality products. This makes sense for things like sports equipment (bikes, skateboards, fishing equipment), machinery (lawnmowers, snowblowers), and electronics (high end audio/video gear), but for basics like soap and toothpaste, there is very little difference between the products, all stores sell the same brands, and the only real discernable purchasing criteria is price.

Re:Behind the curve

[gtall]

Okay, let's play the budget game and decide what you are going to cut. The discretionary side of the budget is approx. $1.020 Trillion and the non-discretionary side is approx. $2.6 Trillion. Discretionary has already been cut and you'll fail to notice any decrease in taxes. Of discretionary, military is about $570 Billion. Of that, approx. half is salaries and benefits. The personnel side has already been cut and is projected to cut more. No real appreciable saving due to those cuts are apparent. So that leaves training, procurement, etc. Procurement has already been cut. That leaves bases....except they've been cut as well and the Pentagon is floating another BRAC, which is strongly being pushed back against by your congresscritters which don't want a base cut in their district. Similar concerns occur with procurement except that congress is making it worse by demanding the Pentagon buy stuff they don't want. So let's cut all those overseas obligations. Hmmm...Europe, we can feed it back to the Russians, they'll like us for doing that and the Euroweenies cannot find the grit to defend themselves anyhow...except that isn't real expensive. Similarly with the Pacific, you won't mind being pushed around by China which already claims the entire S. China Sea owing to cultural history, blah, blah, blah...whatever excuse they are using to make their egos look bigger this year.

What about the rest of discretionary. You like clean air and water, yes? Don't touch EPA, the Republicans don't believe in it either so maybe you can get a few bill out of them. NIH? Does anyone in your family have a nasty disease? They fund research into those that the drug companies won't because not enough people will die from small ball diseases. The list there goes on.

How about the non-discretionary side. All those promises to the old folks that were made? They believed them even if the promises cannot be kept. So Grandma can come and live with you, yes? By the way, her meds are expensive so better start saving. We could start changing the promises made to younger generation so they'll not have a nasty surprise when they get blue hair. But those won't buy the next election and they won't save current taxes.

How about welfare? We could squeeze all the corruption out of that...except, if we knew how to do that effectively, we'd have already done it.

BTW: Don't forget about global warming and sea level rise. Norfolk, VA. and Miami, FL. won't. They want federal aid to stop the sea from eating their towns. So we could make changes now to mitigate that disaster...except that coal state pols claim that would be bad because it will suck jobs from their states...better to screw the world than they get dis-elected by disgruntled unemployed.

So, what's yer plan?

Re:Behind the curve

[TheSync]

Because wages are generally only a fraction of the cost of goods sold, raising wages doesn't result in anywhere near as much of an increase in prices

The natural experiment is the fracking lands of North Dakota, where labor is so scarce that the market wage for McDonalds starts at $10.50/hour and they get a $300 signing bonus - but the Big Macs cost $1 more than usual.

Re:Behind the curve

[MBGMorden]

What else can you really compete on when you're selling basics like toilet paper and laundry detergent.

The last one: image. Wal-mart has picked up such a negative image that a lot of people will pay extra just to make sure they don't have to shop there. Heck I personally buy a lot of store-brand generics for lots of products, but I won't buy those at Walmart because I don't want anyone who might come in my home to see a Wal-mart store brand product in my house.

One thing stores can compete in too is in non-imported goods. I try to buy "Made in the USA" goods when I can - particularly for things like tools. The local hardware store runs about 15-20% more than Walmart but a LOT of what they carry is domestically produced, and even for the stuff that isn't, they generally filter out the "junk" that Walmart sells. If something is of low/poor quality, that store generally won't stock it. They also have knowledgeable people working there, which helps. You're not going to find a person with actual plumbing or electrical experience working the hardware section at Wal-mart.

Re:Behind the curve

[TheSync]

Care to place a wager?

Seattle currently has a 16.6% unemployment rate for youth age 16-24 (based on this data.

I'd be glad to wager that by 2020, the unemployment rate for youth age 16-24 in Seattle will be higher than 16.6%, with $50 going to a charity of your choice.

Re:Behind the curve

[TheSync]

Walmart is the 900-kb gorilla

Note: THERE IS NO WALMART IN SEATTLE. The closest ones are in Bellevue.

Re:Behind the curve

[stenvar]

Employers will take any opportunity to lower wages, but employees can't switch jobs as easily.

Really? Is "I quit" so hard to say?

Of course, if you lack skills that make you employable, you will have a hard time to find another job. But why should individual employers be burdened with paying for your lack of skills? If hard-to-employ people need financial help, it should be provided as welfare, and people should vote for it explicitly.

What raises in minimum wage really are is an attempt to sneak in tax increases without anybody noticing. And, ironically, minimum wage increases are regressive: high income people don't notice them because they generally don't do business with businesses employing minimum wage workers anyway.

Re:Behind the curve

[rastos1]

Minimum wage and livable wage are unrelated.

Re:Behind the curve

[Anonymous Coward]

If only we could raise demand, by sticking income into the hands of pure consumers... like the poor.

The issue isn't what the minimum wage should be forever, it will always need to increase, as we have inflation and productivity increases. The issue is distribution of wealth. Minimum wage is a useful tool to drive income to Labor instead of Capitol. Limiting rent seeking behavior is almost exclusively good for the people in general.

Re:Behind the curve

[freezin fat guy]

You liberal hippies and your math are what is wrong with America these days.

I have learned to trust that lowering costs for the rich will benefit me and my trailer-dwelling family far more than increasing our wages.

Re:Behind the curve

[geekoid]

Link to the corrected story? my google fu seems off.

Re:Behind the curve

[Immerman]

Not to mention to save *everyone else* from his stupidity. It only takes a fairly small group of suckers to pull the wages down for everybody in the sector.

Re: Behind the curve

[kenh]

Freeze spending at current dollar levels, let inflation squeeze out the waste, force the gov't to make hard decisions about what us and isn't necessary.

I'd also freeze tax rates, as the economy increases revenue will increase and we can start reducing our annual deficit spending (not increase spending when tax receipts increase).

If, in a fit of 99%er passion you feel the need to increase tax rates on the wealthy, fine, but every penny in additional tax revenues goes towards paying down debt/decreasing deficit spending.

We have a $3.8 Trillion annual budget, spread out over 330 Million citizens, that comes to over $10,000 per person per year in spending at the federal level - that seems like plenty.

(BTW, we not only have the federal EPA, we also have 50 state EPA agencies, think we might have some overlap we could eliminate and cut costs? Same for education (one federal DoE, fifty state DoEs)...)

Re:Behind the curve

[geekoid]

"Minimum wage is not supposed yo be a living wage."
Stop with that nonsense.
It's not true.
"No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." FDR

in 1964, the min wage was 1:15. You could actually live off that with a one income family.
Min wage has not kept up with the real cost of basic needs. like housing, transportation, entertainment, food, cloths.

1964 Avg. Rent 115; avg gas 30 cents; avg bread 21 cents;

Re:Behind the curve

[dave420]

Making generalisations only serves to make you look irrational, which reflects poorly on your position whether it is right or wrong. Just to help you out, every time you want to write "liberals" or "conservatives" and ascribe a behaviour or attribute to each and every one of them (beyond subscribing to their particular -ism in question), stop - it's wrong, and you're hurting yourself.

Re:Behind the curve

[Opportunist]

And with minimum wage, more people could afford to do this.

I really admire your effort and I do support it (doing it myself, albeit in a different country), but people who have to watch prices carefully 'cause the few bucks left have to last another week can't really be very choosy when it comes to shopping.

Re:Behind the curve

[geekoid]

A) He used wage correctly.

B) Every group changes the definition when they are loosing. If fact in the last 16 years, the pubs have been notorious of it.

The rest of your original post is factual nonsense. So you might want to look at some actual data and facts. For those of us who have researched it you look like an dumb shit.

Re: Behind the curve

[CaptainLard]

(BTW, we not only have the federal EPA, we also have 50 state EPA agencies, think we might have some overlap we could eliminate and cut costs? Same for education (one federal DoE, fifty state DoEs)...)

My last big company (over 100k employees, nearly 0.03% of the US population) not only had a president/CEO, there were also VP's for each business unit. They all had their own VP's who each had a bunch of directors and managers. 3-4 of those managers were my boss. Think we might have some overlap we could eliminate and cut costs?

Re: Behind the curve

[Xaedalus]

Isn't that essentially what we're doing right now, through Congress's inaction on a budget plan?

Re:Behind the curve

[internerdj]

Broken or not, poverty safety nets are generally a crime offset. We'll have to replace what we remove.

Re:Behind the curve

[OakDragon]

Walmart is the 900-kb gorilla

That gorilla needs a RAM upgrade.

Re:Behind the curve

[kaatochacha]

Except he's right. In my parent's hometown, a grocery store and a department store went out of business. buildings sat empty for years until....Walmart stepped into both of them. People bitched, but who else was willing to move in, they'd sat empty for so long and nobody else saw money there.
This is in California.

Re:Behind the curve

[Perl-Pusher]

Stay with me on this, human nature is not linear. A 5% increase in labor cost will result in an excuse to raise prices even more. By not just your employer but every one else. If you make more than minimum wage, say $10 more than the current minimum your going to demand more money too, especially when your cost of living just went up. No mechanism is in place to ensure that all things only rise by 5% in Seattle. The costs will continue to climb until the minimum wage is again unbearable. Meanwhile communities that didn't raise there costs will see a large influx of people. Who will then vote to make where they are now exactly as where they left. Case in point : California has been unwittingly exporting people to Colorado and Idaho in large numbers. Driving up the costs in those areas. So much so that in Colorado parts of it want to to secede from Colorado. Because their representation has also been marginalized.

Re:Behind the curve

[freezin fat guy]

Well, I do sincerely apologize for my unkind last statement. That was not compassionate and I suspect like most people you have redeeming qualities.

But in 2014 I am amazed at the bigotry expressed against people who vote differently. That is very ignorant. It's gotten to the point where people convince themselves anyone who votes ______ is pure of heart and and anyone who votes ________ is incapable of human decency. It takes a lot of work for political parties to make us that dumb.

Re:Behind the curve

[Opportunist]

If people can afford living on one job only, they will quit their second and third jobs, opening up a lot of new jobs for those that might lose theirs.

I don't really get the idea of people losing their job because wages rise. Why? Why would I keep someone for 5 bucks an hour but fire him for 10? The question is whether I NEED the worker or whether I DO NOT need him. If I don't need him, I won't keep him for 5 around either. It's 5 bucks an hour that I could save, so why not kick his ass out? OTOH, if I do need him, I will have to pay him. 5 or 10 bucks. It will reduce my profit, but if I NEED him to do my business, I will HAVE to pay.

The only reason why I could fire someone due to an increase in wages is when this increase actually affects my cost in such a way that due to it I can no longer be profitable and hence have to close down entirely. Because either I CAN provide a service profitably or I CAN NOT. And that in turn is independent of the number of employees.

What can happen is that I would have to cut back on services I can provide now that would become unprofitable due to increased wages. Like, say, opening my shop 24/7 when the graveyard shift was only profitable because the worker was dirt cheap. Well, then I guess that means that people don't really NEED that service anyway. No loss here. The only thing we'll lose here is a few jobs in the minimal wage sector which, as noted above in the first paragraph, will easily be caught by the jobs now opening due to people working fewer jobs to make ends meet.

What it boils down to, and this is not a "theory", it's simply what I can observe by looking around myself: A minimum wage that doesn't only mean that you can sustain yourself but also that you can still maintain at least a moderate standard of living is in the end a boost to the economy because that standard of living has to be provided by someone. Of course the economic downturn has hit us, too, but by no means as hard as it has hit other countries with a lower social standard. People here still have money to spend and they DO spend, mostly on services. That in turn means jobs. That means less pressure on the social services provided by the state. Resulting in lower cost for social services. People are certainly doing worse than they did before the crisis hit, but we're a far cry from the situation the US is in. In a nutshell, even long time unemployed people can actually enjoy a minimal living standard and are kept from engaging in criminal activities because even they have a damn lot to lose.

I can go for a walk at 3am in the worst part of my town and return home alive and with all my cash and cellphone in my pocket. Can you?

so by the time this kicks in

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

$15 will be the new $7.50

Hello automation!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hello automation!

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

At least the machines will get your order right.

Re:Hello automation!

[cmdr_tofu]

There are, suprisingly, a lot of adult fast food workers.

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2014/...

Re:Hello automation!

[evilviper]

it's actually a net loss for everyone if one of the ways that kid is undercutting lawn services is by not paying taxes on that income.

At lower income levels, the tax burden is very small. There's no way a lawn care service is remitting 50% of the money it charges, paying taxes and similar, so while there is a small loss to the local, state and federal governments, the net effect is extremely obviously POSITIVE for all involved.

Re:Hello automation!

[evilviper]

Thought-crime... Got it.

Re:Hello automation!

[ceoyoyo]

What makes you think he's being paid under the table? Surely you Americans have something like a minimum taxable income or personal exemption? Where I live it's around $15,000 a year. Make less than that and you don't need to pay taxes, or even file a return. $600 every two weeks for the four weeks of summer is rather a lot less than that.

Re:Hello automation!

[tmosley]

Yeah, think of all those unmurdered brown people. Won't someone PLEASE think about the unmurdered brown CHILDREN!?

Sweden

[MindPrison]

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.

Re:Sweden

[blahplusplus]

"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."

That's the nature of capitalist society, capitalism naturally breeds inequality. Marx's analysis of capitalism still holds true.

Dealing with the effects of capital accumulation on the working class, Marx states:

"They mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of the appendage of a machines destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hateful toil; they estrange him from the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power. ... It follows therefore in proportion as capital accumulates the lot of labourer, be his wages high or low, must grow worse. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, accumulation of misery, agony, toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole."

Re:Sweden

[DNS-and-BIND]

"The only universal medicine (Marxists) have for social evils - State ownership of the means of production - is not only perfectly compatible with all the disasters of the capitalist world: with exploitation, imperialism, pollution, misery, economic waste, national hatred and national oppression, but it adds to them a series of disasters of its own: inefficiency, lack of economic incentives and above all the unrestricted rule of the omnipresent bureaucracy, a concentration of power never before known in human history".
-- Leszek Kolakowski (a man who grew up much like you, as an ardent Marxist and atheist, only to get hit on the head with a cold bucket of reality from the system that you love)

Re:Sweden

[blahplusplus]

"Oh, hang on. Sorry, he was writing about socialism, wasn't he?"

Orwell, is a democratic socialist. He was criticizing stalin's russia

"... for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

AKA he wanted to revive the socialist movement. He stayed a socialist.

Re:Sweden

[0123456]

Yes he was. But the outcome of either system is the same - a small group of elites exerts control over the masses - they just differ on who the small group of elites should be.

Yes, exactly. Socialists whine about 'equality', then when they're in power they steal money from the poor taxpayers to pay for their Zil limos; but that's OK, because they don't actually own the Zil limos, they just use them.

Re:Sweden

[CRCulver]

In the Nordic countries, I can only assume that any working class receiving a meagre salary is insufficiently organized. When I moved to Finland to study, I initially didn't speak the language well enough to get white collar work, so I had to support myself by taking cleaning jobs. I was amazed how much money I was making compared to what I would have made in the US: though there is no legislated minimum wage, the union had succeeded in bargaining for high wages and other benefits, all of which employees in the field in question received whether they were union members or not.

Re:Sweden

[itsdapead]

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.

You don't need to be a socialist: lack of a minimum living wage means that the taxpayer is forking out vast quantities of money to subsidise businesses by allowing them to employ people without paying them a living wage. Even the capitalist paradise of the USA understands that you can have too many people starving in the streets and spends billions of dollars on welfare. In the UK, the government makes a huge song and dance about the long-term unemployed while avoiding the elephant in the room: a huge chunk of the welfare budget is being spent to allow working people to sleep indoors and eat food so that their employers can pay them peanuts.

Also, you can't sell things to people with no money, which is a problem... we've tried lending them money that they can't possibly repay, and that went a bit pear-shaped, so we're trying it again to see if it turns out differently this time.

Re:Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the difference between socialism and authoritarianism. You might stop sounding like a total moron then.

The more socialist countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany) are doing far better than the more highly capitalist ones post crash.

Re:Sweden

[GoCrazy]

Both of you are such wow. It's almost as if the general nature of corrupt people is to steal from others to pay for their own luxury goods regardless of what political stance they represent on their face

Re:Sweden

[TheSync]

That's the nature of capitalist society, capitalism naturally breeds inequality. Marx's analysis of capitalism still holds true.

On the other hand, Communism kills tens of millions of people through starvation (Ukrainian "famine", Great Leap Forward, etc.). So you gotta make the call if you want the poor to starve or to just be unequal.

Re:Sweden

[BForrester]

You're confusing the term "socialist" with "greedy opportunist." The latter exists in just about every political/economic system.

"Never judge a philosophy by its abuse."
    -- Saint Augustine

Re:Sweden

[Shadow99_1]

Communism is not socialism and capitalism is not a 'cure' to either. Your examples of Communism had little to do with actual communism (common ownership of the means of production) and more to do with wacky crack pots doing strange things when given power in their countries.

First city?

[physicsphairy]

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.

Re:First city?

[drinkypoo]

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.

The fact that you think that $10.74 is a living wage in San Francisco is laughable at best.

So, they haven't actually raised it

[0123456]

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.

Re:Even higher!

[Jawnn]

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...

Thank you, gullible tool, for helping us propagate the message that earning a living wage is bad for workers.
Your friends,
The One Percent

Re:Even higher!

[Your.Master]

When you're selling hot dogs at the side of the street, if you set the price at $0, you'll lose money, and if you set the price at $100000, you'll lose money, but if you set the price at $3, you might make money?

You can't reductio ad absurdum a minimum wage like that.

As a difficult-to-implement experiment, I'd love to see what actually happens (I know what people of various political stripes will predict happens; I want to see reality tried and I want to see it tried a few times in different cultures so we aren't extrapolating from a single datapoint) when you combine Mincome that met the "living wage" criteria, with abolishing the minimum wage.

Since everybody now makes Mincome, the living wage is no longer a factor and that knocks out the key motivation behind a minimum wage. Therefore, in principle, you can hire your fast food vendors at 50 cents an hour. Provided you can find them, of course, since if they have a livable wage, they don't have "sheer desperation" as a motivator to get a low-paying job -- but so long as the entire economy doesn't collapse to the point that the mincome is unsustainable, I'd view that as a positive change, not a negative. Job experience might be a motivator, though, and anyway a living wage isn't exactly a luxury wage -- somebody who made $10 an hour might be perfectly willing to work the same job at $2 an hour to effectively push their income up and save up for that xbox or whatever. Maybe shit job wages go down, maybe they go up, maybe it depends on the industry -- there are factors pushing in both directions.

Meanwhile, the mincome wouldn't be completely irrelevant to the lives of the relatively high-paid tech workers (obviously this varies with geography), but it wouldn't be an overriding concern either. It gives a bit more power to the worker in that they can be confident that their family won't starve if they quit in outrage or if a prospective employer calls the employee's bluff in a salary negotiation.

I know the mincome concept makes a lot of people grind their teeth just on the face of it (COMMUNISM LEADS TO DEAD BABIEZ!), but among other things it's about the only practical way to realize the theory of having truly no minimum wage at all. Bluntly, even slaves cost money to keep alive -- that expense combined with the limited hours in a day generates an effective wage floor even without the law, in the absence of some other income source like a parent or spouse or independent wealth or rampant theft.

Wealth Inequality in America

[StripedCow]

I'll just leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I like how they conflate "minimum" and "living".

[tlambert]

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.

Re:Minimum wages create unemployment

[gronofer]

And then the unemployed are forced to do voluntary work as one of the requirements to receive government payments. This is the way it works in Australia. Converting low-paid work to slave labour.

Re:Even higher!

[captjc]

Still further there is the even more ignorant people that believe that not only should there be a minimum, but that it should be a "living wage" -- because all work that must be done must also be worth enough to afford a nice cozy life.

Whoa, back the horse up. A living wage is not about a "nice cozy life". It is about not having to choose between eating and paying the rent. Believe it or not, there are some people in this country that have to make that decision. Why should anyone have to work 2-3 jobs just to survive when corporate profits are at an all time high?

Re:Even higher!

[kiddygrinder]

this is what makes me angry about people bitching about minimum wage increases. there are *so* many countries with much higher minimum wages that you could quite easily look at to see the result of said changes.

here's a hint, the worse off are much less so.

Re:Even higher!

[kiddygrinder]

is it? that's about australia's minimum wage and the sun seems to be still shining over here.

Re:Even higher!

[N1AK]

No serious economist supports the minimum wage.

You're uninformed and have a vastly over-sized opinion of your own knowledge. Plenty of very credible economists support the idea of a minimum wage, in fact many support a minimum wage nearly 50% higher than the current US minimum wage source here

You know when you see 'stupid' people saying they don't see why doctors, lawyers, scientists, programmers etc get paid so much because they don't understand what they do and thus think it must be easy? That's like you commenting on what 'serious' economists think when you clearly haven't got a fucking clue.

We Need a *Maximum* Wage

[Digital Vomit]

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.

Re:We Need a *Maximum* Wage

[Attila Dimedici]

Wow, just a couple of comments up someone was accused of making the slippery slope fallacy because they proposed that "first they set the minimum wage, than they make if a 'living wage', then they start calling for a maximum wage. And here you are proving that they were not guilty of a fallacy at all!

Re:Even higher!

[Wizardess]

Communism leads to dead retirees if not babies, dear. They are on a fixed income. Seattle has just doubled what it will cost them to go out for a dinner or a coffee. If all they get is social security you've just constrained them to their homes. Oh wait, they can't even live there because the prices of the food they eat are going to go up. The prices of the gasoline they use to get out of the city to saner purchasing climes goes up. All prices go up. How about making sure those on a Social Security income have their income go up accordingly?

If the current minimum wage is not worth working to receive why do people work? They have welfare to fall back upon? It sets a very effective and practical minimum wage? Oh, you say these are young people of school age trying to build up work resumes of any kind possible so they can move on to better paying jobs? Hm, will they be able to get the resume job (hey, he actually is willing to work) with the higher cost for their unproven (or proven barely adequate) labor?

Minimum wage has a lot of "feel good" associated with it. Now sit down and build the logic tree for what happens next, with real people involved not fantasy idealized people.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

{^_^}

Re:Eliminates all jobs earning less than 15 USD/ho

[captjc]

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.

Re:I can never wrap my head around this.

[berberine]

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?

These are my monthly bills.

Mortgage $500

Electric $120

Car payment $300

Internet $70

Water & Trash $50

Phone $50

Student loan $300

Car Insurance $120

Medicine $250

Retirement $100

Gas & Groceries $550

Savings $100

Life Insurance $60

That's a total of $2570

If I take out savings, life insurance and retirement savings, that would be $2310. Let's say my car and student loan is paid off. That would be $1710. My take home pay after taxes is $1100 a month. I am fortunate enough to be married to someone who makes more than me and we can pay our bills and save for retirement.

If you make $15 an hour in my town, you might be able to cover that $1710, depending on how much your health insurance costs. I have a friend that makes $15.17 an hour and brings home just under $1800 a month. This was before the Affordable Care Act went into place and everyone had to have some kind of insurance.

Let's say I'm a healthy person who doesn't need medication. Subtracting that $250, you get $1460. My salary would still not be enough to cover the bills. My friend may be able to cover the bills, but that depends on how much she is paying for health insurances as well. At $15 an hour, if there's nothing wrong with you, you would probably be okay, providing nothing ever goes wrong. This is also in my rural area of the country. I'm thinking a large city like Seattle, NY, LA, Miami, etc., $15 will still force you to find a second job.

For $15 an hour, where I live, you're just scraping by. You're not going to get any vacation pay, not that you need it because you couldn't afford to go anywhere anyway. Most people in my town make $10-12 an hour and have a second job.

I don't live an extravagant life. My life is mostly work and home with an occasional night out with friends. If I was on my own, with my salary, I'd never be able to eat out, travel, or do much other than work just to cover my bills.

Re:Eliminates all jobs earning less than 15 USD/ho

[Smidge204]

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=

Who hires workers they don't need?

[Bruinwar]

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? You can spread around some of it to other employees but that only goes so far. Every single place I've ever worked at had just enough or usually less than enough people to do what needed to be done. Productivity has never been higher in the U.S.

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.

Re:Who hires workers they don't need?

[Simulant]

Oh, but cheap, exploitable labor is the Capitalist's god-given right. Just another commodity.

Re:Who hires workers they don't need?

[PseudoCoder]

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? You can spread around some of it to other employees but that only goes so far. Every single place I've ever worked at had just enough or usually less than enough people to do what needed to be done. Productivity has never been higher in the U.S.

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.

It's not an employee you don't need. It's an under-performing load you wouldn't want anyways, or a tough choice you have to make having to let go of someone you actually like just to keep the rest of the business afloat. Starting a business is getting harder and more expensive than it was before. The new businesses that you say will jump in and fill the gap will have a higher cost structure than their predecessors, so the incentive is lessened, to the point where it's better to just not try.

There is no moral obligation to create jobs, and it's not the dream of the entrepreneur to create jobs either. "Progressivism" has successfully broken our view of the risk/reward/consequence dynamic that is a fact of life and replaced it with academic sophistries that ignore history and destroy economies for the sake of "equality". If I take a risk, I should be rewarded if I am successful, and should suffer the consequences if I am not. If we are all subject to that dynamic, then that is true equality. When you try to mess with that to manufacture equality, you get bailouts and cronies of the decision makers getting rich.

It's easy to see that most of the commenters here haven't started or run businesses and are commenting on real situations from an idealized or hypothetical perspective. Please go out and try to start your own thing, then ask why or why not.

Re:Why stop there?

[guises]

no employer will take a risk on them at that wage level.

This is such a silly concept. If the employer needs someone in order to make its business work, then it will hire someone. It's not a matter of choice, no employer likes having extra people just sitting around - that's wasteful at any price. A need for employees creates new jobs. This is the only thing that creates new jobs.

You say that this will reduce job opportunities for those who are less educated, but the reality is that the employer is going to get the best / most appropriate employee that it can no matter what the job is and no matter what the salary. The only point at which salary actually factors into this is when the business is just barely scraping by and may not be able to afford the employees that it needs. So this may be bad news for some already failing businesses, but that's it - everyone else benefits. Whether it's the employees who are now making more money, or the non-failed businesses who are selling more product because the people who buy their products now have more money.

Re:Even higher!

[visualight]

That's actually a flat out lie. All studies refute what you just said. Actually common knowledge refutes what you just said. When a business needs one additional hire they don't hire two people just because labor is cheap and they can afford it. They still hire just ONE. Low wages DO NOT CREATE JOBS. I'm so sick of hearing this lie repeated...

LOW WAGES DO NOT CREATE JOBS. GIVING WEALTHY PEOPLE MORE MONEY DOES NOT CREATE JOBS. HAVING MORE PEOPLE THAT CAN AFFORD A SECOND PAIR OF SHOES CREATES JOBS.

Re:Since when is everyone guaranteed a lifestyle?

[itsdapead]

Keep in mind that a family would qualify for SNAP and rent support also.

Translation: the employer can only get away with paying only $7.50 because the government makes up the difference between that and a realistic wage. Benefits without minimum living wage == state subsidy of industry. Still, don't worry, if you look around enough you'll be able to find someone faking disability to parade in front of the media, and prevent people asking awkward questions about how much taxpayers money goes to allowing working people to survive on unliveable wages.

$30,000 per year

[sjbe]

$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.

Re:$30,000 per year

[AthanasiusKircher]

$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.

It's truly sad how many of this sort of ignorant comments a story like this brings out.

The main thing to take note of is that many people who work for minimum wage don't work full-time. So, you can't just extrapolate from an hourly wage to an annual salary. And most part-time workers are subject to the whims of their employer in terms of work schedule. If you're not getting enough hours from one job, it's often difficult to add on another part-time job, because many employers demand flexibility in your schedule. You can't come in a few times? Fine -- they'll start calling someone else.

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.

If you're (1) a single person (2) with no kids (3) in good health (4) with no dependents (5) in an area where rents and cost of living aren't outrageous, yeah, it's almost "certainly enough to get by." You might even be able to live reasonably well, if you are budget-conscious. If any of those is not true, it can be harder. If you have a number of these "conditions," even assuming a full-time job and a $30,000 income, it may not be easy.

Re:$30,000 per year

[Enigma2175]

It's truly sad how many of this sort of ignorant comments a story like this brings out.

The main thing to take note of is that many people who work for minimum wage don't work full-time. So, you can't just extrapolate from an hourly wage to an annual salary. And most part-time workers are subject to the whims of their employer in terms of work schedule. If you're not getting enough hours from one job, it's often difficult to add on another part-time job, because many employers demand flexibility in your schedule. You can't come in a few times? Fine -- they'll start calling someone else.

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.

If you're (1) a single person (2) with no kids (3) in good health (4) with no dependents (5) in an area where rents and cost of living aren't outrageous, yeah, it's almost "certainly enough to get by." You might even be able to live reasonably well, if you are budget-conscious. If any of those is not true, it can be harder. If you have a number of these "conditions," even assuming a full-time job and a $30,000 income, it may not be easy.

Why does it have to be easy? If you made poor decisions in your life (no skills, children you can't afford, living in an area you can't afford) why is it my responsibility (or the government's responsibility, or a private company's responsibility) to provide for you? The only item I agree with on your list is health, often health problems are not under a person's control. For things that ARE under a person's control, they made their choices, they should be the one to pay the piper. If your skills do not command a high enough salary it is your failing, not your employer's. If you provide more value for your employer and your job isn't so easy that they can hire a 16-year-old off the street to replace you then you have bargaining power when it comes to salary negotiations. If you don't educate yourself and your only skills are what your employer teaches you after being hired then you shouldn't expect to make a ton of money.

Re:$30,000 per year

[HuntingHades]

Plenty of adults are stuck working part time as well. They may be perfectly willing to work full time, but the new management style in retail and some other areas is to use software at the last minute to create the schedules and get the optimal number of employees on site at any given time without ever having any extra employees. As a result they will typically be scheduled with erratic schedules of 30 hours or less a week, and because they schedule is constantly changing, they can't easily schedule in a second job either. It's even worse for employees who need to juggle work schedule with arranging child care. And the argument of "they should find a better job" doesn't really hold water either. Depending on location, transport and the local job market, there may not be any other better jobs available. You can find plenty of articles about this over the last few years if you search for "just in time scheduling". Here's one representative article discussing the problems it causes for a significant portion of the workforce. http://www.labornotes.org/2012...

Re:$30,000 per year

[Jmc23]

if you have substantial student loans and are making minimum wage, you're not very bright and probably could have skipped the 'education'.

If you live where there's crazy real estate and you're making minimum wage, you're not very bright and should move away.

If you have a child...

Re:$30,000 per year

[marquisdepolis]

What if you weren't educated enough because your parents were drunk douchebags? That your fault too? What about if the rents in your area went up 200% because IT idiots moved in, and you have to move to a place that requires a 3 hour commute?

Blaming everything on the individual assumes that everything that happens in an individual's life is under their control. It's the biggest fucking mistake on the planet to assume this ...

Re:$30,000 per year

[theIsovist]

I'm currently in Seattle, living as a graduate student. I'm employed in a school associated research lab as a graduate researcher, making the maximum the lab can pay me, per school guidelines, at $15/ hour. This glorious number is set to be the new minimum wage. So let's talk about what it's like to be on minimum wage. Or at least what it will be like.

Should I find a better job? The job I have is a fantastic for when I leave school, providing an exceptional network and excellent experience. I'm doing research to reduce energy use in the construction sector, which benefits society as a whole. Leaving this job would be short sighted. Admittedly, when the minimum wage increases, not all low paying jobs will be like this, but many good jobs still are.

Should I live elsewhere? Rent in the area is high and going higher, so I live with 3 other people. My location is in the city, but in the cheaper areas, not trendy at all and less safe overall, but it works. I live in this city because this is where the jobs are. I could move to the suburbs, but that would require both car payments and gas payments, neither of which are cheap, especially given >$4 gas. Public transportation is an alternative, but it costs both money (2.50 or so a ride) and time (an hour each way, so that's 30 dollars of lost productivity per day). That may not seem like much, but on $15 an hour, it's tough. So I currently bike when I can.

Eating out here is quite expensive, with most non-fast food places providing meals that start at 12-13 dollars and quickly rising from there (and that's the going rate for a burger, the most pedestrian of foods), so I eat in. Can't waste an hours worth of work to have a meal out, after all. It's not terrible, because I can cook quite well, and I've shifted to a primarily vegetarian life style, as meat is expensive.

So at the end of the day, my paycheck goes to food and shelter, both of which are kept as cheap as possible. What little extra I have is saved and used for emergency funds, which can be wiped out pretty quickly in some unforeseen event. God help me if I'm hit by a car, or come down with the flu. Being out of commission for a week is not an option. All in all, I feel I'm doing a good job pushing my future forward. But my present is a fragile system that could be wiped out given a large enough hit.

So what am I saying? Your simplistic idea of "you're an idiot and you should move" completely ignores what life is like on a tight paycheck. There are bright people on a low paycheck, and it's quite the trap. Life on a slim budget has no room for error, and when your entire system revolves around survival, it takes extra work to plan for a future.

What should be more frightening to you is that you are surrounded by people who live like this. The people who take your cash at the starbucks, the people who clean your trash out from your desk. You rely on these people, and yet you look down on them and mock them. You're lucky you are where you are at, because what you do not have to do is pull yourself up from nothing. And if you are the person who came from the mean streets and a poor family, congratulations, you've done something amazing. But if you are, you're an amazing jerk to all those who are trying to do the same thing you did.

Re:$30,000 per year

[AthanasiusKircher]

Why does it have to be easy?

Did I say it had to be? No. I was arguing against the Parent Poster's comment, which was in response to GP's comment that a minimum wage was "barely a liveable wage." The Parent responded and said people who couldn't figure out how live on that were "clueless and/or spoiled" and it was "certainly enough to get by."

I then responded to and said it probably wouldn't be that easy for everyone, and I gave examples where it might be harder, i.e., closer to GP's claim that for some people it might "barely" be "a liveable wage."

In other words, I wasn't at all arguing that it should be "easy," but rather that for some people with these situations, it simply isn't, and it's rather ignorant to suggest that it is.

If you made poor decisions in your life (no skills, children you can't afford, living in an area you can't afford) why is it my responsibility (or the government's responsibility, or a private company's responsibility) to provide for you?

Some people are actually stupid, you know. I don't mean to insult them. I mean that for some people it's really difficult to develop good skills that would be worth more than $15/hour to somebody. If you're officially "mentally retarded," you can often get government subsidies to assist you. But if you're above the arbitrary borderline, you're on your own. Many of the guys who are washing dishes in a kitchen or cleaning the bathroom or bagging your groceries would have serious difficulties developing more "skills" to be competitive in the marketplace. I'm NOT saying we should just give them a happy life for free, but not everyone in the world has the same natural talents for earning potential as anyone else.

As for children, growing up in poverty has all sorts of negative repercussions for kids, and it leads to a cycle where the kids end up living crappy lives again. I don't think there are easy answers to this problem, but simply saying "it's not my problem" will ultimately lead to a generation of more kids in poverty, committing more crimes, etc. down the road. Again, I'm NOT saying we should just throw money at the problem, but we shouldn't ignore it either. (Also, note that combined with above -- stupid people often don't make the best choices. That can include having kids they can't afford. But as a society we've decided that forced sterilization of stupid people is wrong. So... well, that leaves us with a problem of people who sometimes have kids they can't afford, and we need to address it somehow.)

As for "living in an area you can't afford," well, it depends on where you can get a job. You move out of the city, maybe you have to get a car -- a car costs money, insurance, gas, maintenance, etc. You save on rent, but spend more for your car and have a longer commute which means you can't work as many hours. Sure, in some cases you could solve things by moving, but in other cases it's not so simple. I'm not saying this one is the government's problem, but it is a rationale for trying to tailor our poverty policies to the cost of the standard of living in a particular area. Hence my reply to the original parent about $30k -- in some areas, that's plenty to live comfortably. In others, not so much. We just need to be conscious of that.

The only item I agree with on your list is health, often health problems are not under a person's control.

How about (4) on my list: other dependents? Like, for example, ailing parents. Are they under your control, too? I made my choice to care for my sick dad who can't work, so I have to "pay the piper"? Also, there are all sorts of situations where you can end up taking care of people -- for example, kids often end up living with aunts or grandparents if their parents are unable to care for them (for whatever reason). Is it still my "choice" to make if my grandkid needs a home, and I don't want him to go to

Re:A bit high

[ACE209]

Thats because minimum wages don't cause inflation but a one time price raise at best.

Total nonsense

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Total nonsense

[coinreturn]

Absolute fail. You logic assumes that EVERYONE at Walmart is making minimum wage.

Re:Total nonsense

[coinreturn]

So you're going to give the cashier a 50% raise and give nothing to their manager?

Stop moving the goalposts. The post I was responding to said that a 50% increase in minimum wage equates to a 50% increase in labor expense. It does not. As a separate issue, you could give a raise to their manager (but not necessarily 50%). And it doesn't need to go all the way up the chain to the execs!

Re:Total nonsense

[coinreturn]

Maybe you just don't understand what the word 'average' means.

Maybe you don't understand that increasing minimum wage by 50% is not equivalent to increasing the average wage by 50%.

Re:Even higher!

[stealth_finger]

"So broken the rest of the world already does it..."

You seriously believe that? You should visit the far east, india or africa sometime and wise up.

I bet lots of US companies would love to get away with the kind of shit foxxcon does. Is that how you see the ideal job market? Why does it seem that a lot of Americans (some of you seem sane) want nothing more than to be rich and don't give a shit if everyone else is dirt poor. The 'company' seems to have most consideration for it's right to exist and make massive profits while employees are little better than chattel and that's fucked up.

Effect of wage increases

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Even higher!

[tmosley]

This is an experiment. If Seattle's unemployment rate goes up, you MUST accept the fact that raising the minimum wage kills jobs. If it goes down, then you MUST accept the fact that you are living in some sort of magical fantasyland where economic laws don't apply, and should immediately set about breaking windows and starting nuclear wars with aliens to improve the economy.

Imagine if there were a minimum home price. Say, $75,000. Sounds reasonable, right? I mean, everyone should have a right to be able to sell their home for enough to buy another somewhere. But what about houses that aren't worth that much (so cruel, so judgmental!)? They just sit around, and the owners are literally stuck. Sort of like today's young workers, for whom the job market just keeps going up and up and up, leaving new household formation at all time lows. Instead of being able to get a job, they have to go to college and get a degree along with a lifetime of debt slavery, and often wind up with jobs that don't require degrees, and certainly don't pay enough to service the debt.

Re:Even higher!

[TeethWhitener]

I take it you assume this person has no kids. It might surprise you to learn that if you're single and childless and making minimum wage ($7.25/hr at 2000 hrs/year=$14500 yearly income), you aren't part of Romney's 47%. Yep, you pay taxes to the fed, and presumably to the state as well. Here's a story about a woman making $12000/year and paying about $1300 in fed/state/ss/medicare. And that was before the payroll tax break expiration.

So how do you get out of paying taxes if you're making minimum wage? Well, it helps to have kids/be older/have a mortgage. But of course, if that's the case, then the balance sheet you've provided above is wildly obfuscatory, with childcare/medical expenses taking up the bulk of whatever's left after you pay your mortgage.

That's not to mention the fact that you're also assuming that this minimum wage job is a full-time gig. Usually they're part time, and the people holding them work two or more of them, meaning they're spending a decent chunk of money commuting. All this adds up to the most important fact: no savings. The reason that's so damn important is that one little slip-up (car runs over a nail, you slip a disc in your spine, etc.) and all of a sudden, you're running around to high-interest predatory creditors, which isn't exactly a path to financial freedom. That, and since minimum wage jobs are so replaceable, if any emergency happens, you're likely to be unceremoniously fired.

I could go on about how being poor isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but frankly, I think it's kind of ridiculous that I should have to. If it's really as cozy as some people say it is, they certainly have the option of trying it on for size. Hell, it's much easier to become poor than it is to become rich. So why isn't everyone doing it? Because secretly, waaaaay deep down in their heart of hearts, they know it's a shit deal. I think that speaks volumes enough.

Re:Even higher!

[tmosley]

You do know that people don't HAVE to pay rent, right? Teens CAN live with their parents. Adults can too, or they can get roommates.

Also, if you just work for a few hours at $5 an hour, you can afford to eat for a week, if you have the time to cook.

Seriously, you think starvation is a problem in America? Are you nuts?

You can't solve the federal reserve's redistribution of wealth to banks and corporations with more wealth redistribution. If you want to solve the problem of wealth disparity, you have to END MONEY PRINTING.

Re:Even higher!

[ceoyoyo]

Americans NEVER seem to look at other countries. No matter what you're discussing, health care, gun laws, wages, whatever, they always speculate wildly about what might happen if. Never mind that much of the rest of the world has already tried it and found it works pretty well.

Re:Even higher!

[tmosley]

"At the moment, the trend has been to leech money out of the masses and into the hands of the few"

Yes.

" aided and abetted by productivity gains, the abolishment of many traditional trade barriers and the ability to arbitrage labor costs to countries with lower standards of living."

No, this is absolutely wrong. It has been caused 100% by central bank money printing. The corporations that are thriving right now are those with government contracts or are closely related to the banks. These are the organizations that see freshly printed money FIRST, and thus get to buy stuff before prices adjust to the new inflation. This is redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. Total productivity per productive (private sector) worker has risen, but that productivity has been countered by the rise of a class of non-productive worker who gets paid far more than anyone else, ie bankers and government workers.

But you won't understand. Not one man in a million can. At least that is what Keynes thought:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

Re:Even higher!

[tmosley]

Oh, so they ONLY have to raise prices 25%? Yeah, that's not going to hurt anyone already barely scraping by on a fixed income.

Re:Even higher!

[tmosley]

AKA the fastest growing economies in the world.

Re:Inflation

[thaylin]

Actually:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bls.gov%2Fcps%2Fminwage2011.htm&ei=SsyNU4m-H8e-sQSEy4GIAg&usg=AFQjCNGhmyPob_eopcXz8n3WS6t3aqWgZw&bvm=bv.68191837,d.cWc

In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

1.7 million is not almost nobody, unless you have a really strange definition of the word almost.

Re:Even higher!

[AthanasiusKircher]

Even at the median rent level, a worker that earns $8/hour

All of your numbers seem to magically assume a full-time job. Hint: many people who work at or near minimum wage don't have full-time jobs. They thus often don't get benefits, which means they don't get time off for illness or anything, which means you need to factor in lost wages when they can't make it to work.

When the GP says they have to cobble together 2-3 jobs, it's often 2-3 independent part-time jobs, which together often don't add up to 1 full-time job in terms of total wages. And to keep said jobs, you often have to work whenever you're demanded to, which might mean working two full shifts in one day some days, and nothing other days. Unless at least one boss is willing to be flexible, it will be difficult to hold onto more than one job, too.

If some of the jobs are seasonal or dependent on the weather or a service job where you only get called in when things are busy, expect to go through significant periods where you're making a lot less than full-time on that minimum wage.

will still have $450/month left over for food, clothing, etc.

The median rent level shouldn't be taken as a cost of living for any particular area in the U.S. -- obviously in most big cities, the median rent for the city will likely be higher than the U.S. overall. Also, unless you have dependents, you're probably going to pay at least some income tax with that sort of income -- not a lot, but it could still decrease your monthly discretionary spending by maybe $30-50/month (maybe more), which is a significant percentage of $450.

However, let's assume your numbers for the moment. Have you ever had to live on something close to minimum wage in a big city? There are a LOT of things that have to fit into that "$450/month left over for food, clothing, etc." It's not just "etc."

Do you need a car to get to your job? Insurance alone in a big city for a young person (most likely to be working at minimum wage) might cost you $100-200/month, not to mention fuel, maintenance, and a car payment. It's pretty difficult to imagine a situation where you could own a car for less than $100/month in a city. And if you don't have a car, you might have less flexibility about where and when you can work, or whether you'd be able to get between jobs efficiently. So you end up with a commuter pass for public transport instead of a car, which might also cost ~$100/month. (If you don't have a car, though, you might occasionally need to pay for transportation to get to somewhere unusual that you can't get to by public transport.) So, let's say at least $100/month for transport, probably at least $200/month if you really need a car.

Next let's talk about utilities. It helps to have a phone, if you want to actually be able to get calls to come in for a job. Even if you go with the cheapest landline, combine it with heat and electricity, it seems doubtful you're going to get away with less than $100/month total for utilities. Don't think there's going to be much left over for a cell phone or cable tv/internet.

Now you have to budget for miscellaneous expenses, like doctor and dental bills. If you're healthy, great. I know Obamacare is supposed to give poor people health insurance, but so far I get the impression it's mostly catastrophic health insurance unless you pay a higher premium (too high for your budget). Let's suppose you get a magic subsidy that gives you minimal coverage without any premium (most people this would also add a signfiicant expense to your budget as well, potentially thousands of dollars per year). If you just get sick, or have a toothache, be prepared to pay at least something out of pocket. On the low end, you might be able to get away with budgeting only $10-20/month for this, but if you have any health problems, you might need to budget a lot more.

What about other miscellaneous expenses? Need a haircut? Get your

Re:Even higher!

[rogoshen1]

and those countries with higher minimum wages also tend to have better social services, and higher taxes to accommodate the increase in unemployment. You forget that we in America invented the "i've got mine, fuck you" mindset.

Re:Even higher!

[Nimey]

Not true. We seem to look at third-world shitholes and say "hey, at least we're not a third-world shithole, we've got $THING better than they do". In my experience, at least, we don't generally compare ourselves to other first-world countries and especially not western and northern Europe, probably because we privately admit to ourselves that (unemployment aside) we're not doing as well as they are generally.

Re:Even higher!

[TheSync]

I know people who came to the US with no education, no money, no command of the english language. no legal status, etc. and they are able to work hard and provide for their families just fine.

You really have to screw up in the US to actually go hungry. Getting addicted to drugs, doing crime, etc. is one way to go down that path.

I shouldn't have called out meth, there are only about 350,000 meth addicts in the US. There are 7 million people opiate addicts (heroine, pain meds), and 1.5 million cocaine addicts.

Minimum wage, a bigger picture

[Petron]

(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

Re:Minimum wage, a bigger picture

[Radical Moderate]

The inflation index usually ignores the cost of housing, conveniently, which happens to be most people's greatest single expense. As you can see, the minimum wage is hardly keeping up:
Median Average
1980 $64,600 $76,400
1981 $68,900 $83,000
1982 $69,300 $83,900
1983 $75,300 $89,800
1984 $79,900 $97,600
1985 $84,300 $100,800
1986 $92,000 $111,900
1987 $104,500 $127,200
1988 $112,500 $138,300
1989 $120,000 $148,800
1990 $122,900 $149,800
1991 $120,000 $147,200
1992 $121,500 $144,100
1993 $126,500 $147,700
1994 $130,000 $154,500
1995 $133,900 $158,700
1996 $140,000 $166,400
1997 $146,000 $176,200
1998 $152,500 $181,900
1999 $161,000 $195,600
2000 $169,000 $207,000
2001 $175,200 $213,200
2002 $187,600 $228,700
2003 $195,000 $246,300
2004 $221,000 $274,500
2005 $240,900 $297,000
2006 $246,500 $305,900

Re:Minimum wage, a bigger picture

[Radical Moderate]

No. Here's the latest figures:

Apr 2014 $275,800 $320,100
Yes, there was a bubble. It popped, and most markets recovered.

Re:Wages and prices are (mostly)independent variab

[jedidiah]

While that doesn't sound like a lot by itself, it's quite significant when compared to the price of the item in question.

Re:Even higher!

[nephilimsd]

You're presenting a false dichotomy. On the one hand, either your preconceived notions of economics are true. On the other, all established principles of economics are false. This not an "A or not A" situation. It is entirely possible that labor cost does not have the same type of effect as you believe and for destruction for destruction's sake to still be a generally bad economic policy.

Re:Consequences

[NoImNotNineVolt]

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.

One minute you claim that a 50% wage hike would cause Walmart to be unprofitable, and the next you claim that they would increase prices. You can't have it both ways, and that's all I was trying to say. Also, any wage increases would be unilateral; Walmart's workforce is not unionized, and therefore all decisions regarding wages are made unilaterally since there is no second party to wage negotiations.

Regarding payroll taxes, you're oversimplifying. Many payroll taxes are regressive, with a cap on taxable income. Fringe benefits that you mention are also regressive (for example, employer's health insurance contributions for employees is not linearly proportional to wage, and doubling wages doesn't double insurance costs). Consequently, a 50% hike in wages does not result in a 50% hike in overhead costs. Additionally, depending on how you're cooking your books, you did already mention a $27.5B hike in labor costs. If the initial $55B in labor costs included this overhead, then the $27.5B increase also includes the 50% increase in overhead (despite the real increase in overhead necessarily being less than 50%).

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%.

But that's my point. 7.5% isn't a "LOT" higher. It's a lot less than the 50% growth in wages that we're talking about. Most businesses would jump at the chance to increase their costs by 7.5% while at the same time increasing their revenues by 50%, and I think we'd all agree that this is a good deal. Why does this not hold true when discussing wage hikes?

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?

1) Tarriffs
2) The domestic service/retail industry dwarfs the domestic manufacturing industry. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
3) The money comes with consequences, and on the whole, it's still a positive.

There's no evidence to support your remaining claims regarding inflation, unemployment, supply chain effects, etc. However, I do agree that it's NOT simply that everyone is magically better off with no downside anywhere. Some people would undoubtedly be worse off, but overall, it would be a benefit to society.

Re:Downstream consequences

[Immerman]

Even if you assume everyone at every stage of production gets a 50% wage increase, and absolute profits remain the same at the same volume, then prices increase by, at most, 50%. And that assumes that 100% of costs at all stages come down to labor, which of course is nonsense, quite a bit of it is materials and capital expenditures (rent, equipment, etc). But even that ignores the fact that the majority of labor costs across the board are not minimum-wage employees, and thus would see less, if any, change in wages. Production is heavily automated these days, and the folks maintaining the equipment are *not* making minimum wage. The folks making minimum wage are primarily in the service and hospitality industries - the "last mile" of the economy, so to speak.

As for inflation, you're overlooking the fact that inflation is not caused by poor people having more money - plenty of countries have stronger economies with less income inequality than us. The root cause of inflation is the fact that the supply of money is increasing faster than the economy is growing, thus necessarily decreasing the value of all money already in existence. You can get into trouble if the economy starts to shrink, but so long as the economy is growing inflation is entirely a government-manufactured phenomenon, generally for purposes of stimulating investment and/or supplementing government income.

You are correct that a minimum wage does have an effect similar to inflation, by increasing the cost of (some) goods for everyone while only increasing the wages of some, essentially pumping money from the broader economy to those at the very bottom. But the fact is that for the last several decades income inequality has been worsening across the spectrum, we've essentially been pumping money from the bottom upwards across the entire spectrum of the economy, and the farther down the economic ladder you go the harder people have been hit. Certainly there are other ways to reverse the trend, but those tend to incur even greater wrath from the folks at the top.