Funny $15 minimum wage meme

I like Heinlein novels because you can read them so quickly. When you skip over the whacko political BS, they're only half as long.

Speaking of R.H. ,I loved his stuff up to Stranger In a Strange Land . After that it seemed like his head went off on a tangent. Anyone know his back story? What made him go off?

I still shudder at the memory of a hippy I knew extolling the virtues of that book, and explaining at tedious length what the word 'grok' meant.

More like a quarter. Ayn Rand with spaceships.

Earlier on, I was trying to remember a Heinlein book that really annoyed me, and I couldn't remember the title. I just did. It's The Number of the Beast which features an alternate universe where Mars is divided into two colonies, of Britain and Russia. The "Brits" were idiotically stereotyped. A critic said it was "a catalog of Heinlein's sins as an author; it is sophomoric, sexist, militantly right wing, and excessively verbose".

He was also obsessed with an adolescent sexuality.

The problem is that those who believe forcing a $15 minimum wage will make "poor people less poor" is completely and utterly mistaken. Even your liberal guy from Yahoo Finance, Rick Newman, said in his article that "$15 minimum wage is economically inadvisable". See original article here:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/democrats-roll-another-feeble-economic-plan-191529539.html

Some people still think that forcing a $15 wage will some how create wealth out of thin air for the poor. If I'm a small business owner already operating on thin margins, they are just gonna close doors for good. So are those workers laid off better off? Are they any wealthier than they are before? And is there any reason why basic costs of living won't rise due to wage increase?

Liberals despise the labor practices of large conglomerates like Walmart, but know that you are the very reason they exist because higher wages and benefit requirements are forcing small business owners out of business and only by creating those huge conglomerates could cut production costs, have better pricing power, bargaining power, and more political lobbying power.

There's no "deserve" or "not deserve" here. Market forces decides what a product is worth. I'll sell you my iPhone 6 for $5000, will you buy it? Labor is the product here and if you have a unique set of skills your labor is worth more, it's that simple. Anyone can flip meat but not anyone can run the world's biggest fast food chain. And there's no contempt here. I respect everyone regardless of their wage IF they show me the same respect. I will NOT respect anyone who's merely a whiner with nothing intelligent to say.

And, mind you, forcing a $15 wage won't reduce McDonald's CEO's wage by a penny. His salary is determined by market forces, namely, shareholders (including the board). So if you don't want him make millions, you should boycott their stock or rally shareholders to vote down his salary and bonus.

The only people who's gonna be out the money are people who eat at McDonald's who will pay more for their food (may just coincidentally be the very people you are trying to argue for).

"Deserve" has nothing to with it, eh? There is no free market involved with low wages. No one ever bid their wages down just make you a hamburger. You just gravitate to cheaply made burgers and overlook substandard wages, substandard housing, substandard health care, substandard education - all the while chewing what is arguably a substandard burger.


https://thinkprogress.org/this-is-how-much-a-big-mac-would-cost-if-the-minimum-wage-was-15-184b7523b273/

This Is How Much A Big Mac Would Cost If The Minimum Wage Was $15
Bryce Covert
Aug 3, 2015, 2:27 pm


If the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, prices at fast food restaurants would rise by an estimated 4.3 percent, according to a new study. That would mean a McDonald’s Big Mac, which currently goes for $3.99, would cost about 17 cents more, or $4.16.

The study from Purdue University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management also found that in order to compensate for the higher cost of employee compensation at limited-service restaurants, or those without table service or tipping, if they decided to change food sizes rather than prices, the Big Mac would shrink somewhere between 12 and 70 percent.

The price increases would be a good deal larger if the minimum wage were raised to $22 an hour, or average private sector pay: the authors found they would increase by 25 percent, raising the price of a Big Mac by about a dollar.

The study notes that it doesn’t take into account the costs of turnover or any savings gained from higher wages. “People often hypothesize that if you raise pay and offer benefits, turnover will go down. I don’t think we answered the question of whether that reduces turnover,” Richard Ghiselli, professor and head of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, said in a press release. In 2013, the turnover rate for franchises was 93 percent, and it can cost $4,700 per worker who leaves. A previous study found that for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, turnover drops by 2.2 percent, and a $15 wage would come with $5.2 billion in savings for the fast food industry.

That study also found that between the extra money from higher prices, savings from lower turnover, and greater overall economic growth, the fast food industry could easily cover the increased costs of having to pay a $15 minimum wage without reducing any jobs and still have money left over. Other research has found that all employers could react to higher minimum wage costs in the same way — through savings from reduced turnover, higher prices, improved efficiency, and increased demand — and therefore avoid layoffs.

Real world evidence also supports the idea that fast food would deal with higher wages without cutting jobs. In the face of a planned minimum wage increase in Georgia and Alabama, for example, fast food restaurants were going to respond by raising employees’ performance standards. A major review of all the available research on how minimum wage increases impact job growth found that it’s close to zero, and state-level reviews found that those that have raised wages over recent decades haven’t hurt job growth.

The research showing that the fast food industry has ways to cope with a $15 minimum wage comes as workers in that industry, who have staged widespread strikes over the past three years demanding they be paid at least that much, have experienced recent victories. San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles have raised their minimum wages to that level, while fast food workers across the state of New York notched a recent victory that means they will likely be guaranteed that minimum. A $15 minimum wage proposal has even reached Congress.

I can appreciate a civilized discussion. Thank you!!! Finally.

However, there are several problems with these recent left-wing academic studies. Somehow, they all think they can change how the free market works.

First, the article you shared only gave an example of a big mac. It admits that big mac price would go up 4.3% approximately. However, did it consider other daily essentials such as food and supplies you buy from the supermarket that may increase by the same % or more?

I don't know much about Richard Ghiselli's study on cost of turnover because it's not mainstream. The only unintended consequences I could see is that it will somewhat discourage people to go get a better education. Significant increase in college education in recent years have caused college grads to have record levels of debt. Are you familiar with Net Present Value? So if I am a student and I am choosing between working to get $15 vs get a college education and get $20 with a $150k debt at 6% interest rate, I may think twice before going for that degree. This creates a even more abundant supply of unskilled workers. Perhaps you'll quote Bernie and ask for free college. Then who's gonna pay for it? Rich people? So who will those "rich people" be if I may ask? It's like a catch 22 -- you need to get a college degree to be rich, but then again you need rich people to pay for everyone else's college education.

You may argue that middle class wages will rise along with the minimum but there's a lack of empirical evidence. Theories are just theories especially if they are only recently developed. We are in uncharted water here. Looking at the historical minimum wages, we have never raised the minimum wage so much at once:
https://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm
You are talking about raising the minimum wage to $15 from $7.25. That's 106% and that's bound to have consequences.

Sure, you are correct that it will help the industry become more efficient, as exemplified by the supermarkets now have automated checkout lines. So where do you think those cashiers have gone to? McDonald's recently started putting automated order machines in major cities. So do you think they'll still keep as many people?



I find these sentences extremely absurd. So if those employees can't meet the "higher performance standards"? What happens to them? Also as I mentioned above, an absurd minimum wage is not killing conglomerates. It's killing small businesses thus eliminating healthy competition. McDonalds could do so much to cut costs by lowering the food quality, use more GMO, and / or use automation. However, small business owners don't have these options and the only option is to raise the prices of their products / services which would put them at a huge disadvantage. So you are right, Big Mac perhaps really will only be $4.16, but one day when liberals march on the street protesting against these mega companies' unfair practices, remember that liberals are the very reason they exist.

And here's the weakness in your argument.

Minimum wage plays very little part in the economy in general -

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2013/ted_20130325.htm

Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 21 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over.

The industry with the highest proportion of workers with hourly wages at or below the federal minimum wage was leisure and hospitality (about 19 percent). About half of all workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, the vast majority in restaurants and other food services. For many of these workers, tips and commissions supplement the hourly wages received.

When you add up the total payroll of this country doubling the wages of the lowest paid makes no dent in the economy at all.

Purdue is a leftest institution???? Are you kidding?

Are you saying that those workers would be willing to give up those tips for the $15 hourly wage?

You also have to include people who make more than the current minimum wage and less than the proposed minimum wage.

For example, if 10 people in a store make $7.25/hr, 10 people make $8.00/hr, 10 people make $9.00/hr, 10 people make $10.00/hr and the minimum wage is raised to $10.10/hr...it's not just the 10 people who were making the minimum wage that get an increase, it's 40 people getting a bump up in pay.

Absolutely not. When I waited table I averaged over $20/hr. My last year waiting I made over $50K with a $2.13/hr "minimum wage" hourly.

Tipped waiters work a lot harder than $15/hr waiter.

We need to get past the concept of minimum wage and start the conversation with a living wage. If its worth having someone work full time its worth paying that person a living wage. The fact there are homeless with full time jobs here in the US is disgraceful. A job worth doing is a job worth a living wage.

Absofuckinglutely and there ought be a single payer style heathcare program, too.

The talk about a minimum wage is how some people are trying to address the living wage.

Some, maybe, but in the mind of those who do hiring its more of a maximum minimum, something to deflect from what the real issue should be: a living wage.

Its a battle line between profits and still being able to hire labor without dealing with any social responsibility to almost disposable so-called "unskilled" workers.

That's what I thought, and I agree.
But are you saying that how hard (or not) that you work should have no bearing on whether you make a 'living wage' ? You have a definition on what that even is?

OTOH, I never thought I'd say this but technology has about reached the point where we could soon furnish a basic living income to all without condition. It would have to be very carefully implemented in order to work. I think that the very first part of it would be basic shelter and food allowance rather than cash if you don't already have those things. After that you could work for any extra y ou wanted (or not) without forfeiting your basic allowance. This would of course go along with eliminating ALL forms of welfare, public and corporate.

We could also furnish basic medical, but the liberals will have to give up their phobia of 'two tiered medical care'. Society does NOT owe unlimited medical care to everyone for free.

That's up to society to decide, isn't it?

And of course it wouldn't be free. It would be single payer though, and at the point of care the patient wouldn't need to swipe a credit card.

No, principles are not up to society to decide. Society may decide to give it, but they don't 'owe' it.

Yea, magic credit card, that'll solve everything.

Are you oppose to laws requirng any minimum wage of any amount?

Or are you just oppose to the $15 minimum wage?

I ask this question because you may be in favor of a minimum wage, but not that amount.

Then again, you might be oppose to any and all minimum wage. I don't know.