Minimum Wage

Hate to tell you but most ditch digging is done by skilled workers because they drive heavy equipment which does require skill. Worked construction for a while wasn't able to develope the skill to dig ditchs. In fact they only let me swing a hammer which when you start doesn't require skill but in the long run you will develope skill.

On the other hand, flipping burgers isn't a mandatory business that needs to exist. I take that back, people who never learned how to cook would still need burger flippers but if the fast food industry suddenly went under, society as we know it wouldn't starve because we can cook at home.

To say that unskilled workers need more money is almost laughable. Why don't they develope some skills so that they don't have to depend on min wage jobs. I know the company I work for will almost pick up any monkey off of the street to work here. You don't have to have certain skills to work here just the ability to learn and they can teach you just about anything you need to do the job. Fixing people's cable TV issues isn't that hard. What I do requires some skill because not everyone knows how to fix internet issues. It can be taught like most things but they hire people for their experience.

People who flip burgers, wash cars, and bag food are there for reasons and choices they have made. To pay them more then their experience or skill allow is wrong and doing nothing but shifting the burden of supporting these people from the govt to private industry. Market value should push the wages not some politicans who have never worked a real job in their lives.

Nice response. I only used Ditch digging b/c it is the classic example of unskilled labor (I was even thinking of backhoes while typing it, eheh).

You say that



Well, I would say their experience and skill allow them to make as much money as employers are willing to pay in order to have them employed. We have a minimum wage, because as a society we believe that there is a minimum amount of money which is the agreed-upon equivalent for any job performed by a member of our workforce. This acknowledges that yes, while some jobs are more important than others, and more skilled than others, even unskilled jobs are quite important to society, because we need them to be done in order to provide the infrastructure for the skilled jobs. You could not cut out the unskilled jobs without affecting the entire system (though robotics is working on it).

The manager at McD's is a 'skilled position,' but without his unskilled employees, the place wouldn't stay in business. Therefore their positions are worth a certain amount as well, even if they are pretty easy. Our society determines what the lowest legal level amount is in part to help protect the rights of workers and balance out the problems inherent in non-unionized bargaining situations....

I guarantee that, if it wasn't for minimum wage, you wouldn't be making what you make right now (which is undoubtedly far higher than that). You would be working for less money.

Cycloptichorn

(....pssst, just for the record, not every kid wants to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer.)

Sorry I haven't been back to defend my position but logging on has been impossible lately as I'm sure some of you have experienced. Frankly I don't feel like banging my head against a wall. Some of you just don't seem to get it. Not everyone working minimum wage is young, inexperienced, lazy or clueless. (Just like not every business owner is a greedy, winters-in-the-
Bahamas, it's-all-about-me, just-off-to-the-masseuse prick.) Until the menial world is automated someone has to do unskilled jobs and therefore minimum wage workers deserve a living wage. Period.

Guess that makes me a socialist. I can live with that.

Nobody should attempt to support a family on minimum wage. Most minimum wage earners, at least I would estimate, are young, may live at home, and yet without families. Anyone attempting to support a family without any skills above what brings in a minimum wage should rethink their plans for life.

Life sometimes gets in the way of the best laid plans.

It has to do with motivation, being at the right place at the right time, and working hard.

Minimum wage laws are a feel good measure and a great example of political pandering.

There is absolutely no evidence that American corporations are conspiring to keep the minimum wage below a level free markets would establish.

The unintended consequence of statutory minimum wages is a reduction of jobs and an increase in the hiring of illegal aliens.

But it feels good to some for the government to tell those nameless, soulless corporations to pay the American worker a decent wage.

Trouble is that most minimum wage earners don't work for big corporations, and by increasing the minimum wage, the government is forcing otherwise law abiding small businesses to either reduce the number of their employees or to hire more workers "off the books."

Our country, as does most of the world, suffers from an incredible ignorance of the population as respects economics. While we're at it they are all functional physics morons as well because clearly they cannot appreciate the law of cause and effect.

Minimum wage in percent of the average monthly income [2004]:

Source:
German wikipedia [countries translated]; there quoted EU-Commission in Schulten et al. 2006: 24.

Thank you Walter.

Perhaps you can explain the relevance of these statistics, as it is late I am not inclined to seek out the pearl of your cut and paste wisdom.

And it's early here :wink:

I only posted that to give an idea how minimum wages in different countries vary in amount compared to what others earn there.

Right here you've highlighted the fundamental error in you thinking. "Society" has no business being in this sentence. Jobs are agreements between men, irrespective of society. One needs a job and the other needs a job done. Wage is set at the equilibrium of supply and demand.

20 years ago the KFC in Lake Geneva, WI advertised a higher starting wage than the proposed minimum we're discussing. This was no doubt the result of a shortage of employees willing to work for less. The focus of any legislation if you want to help the poor in this respect should be JOB CREATION. Wages driven upwards by Supply and Demand don't leave the least employable among us with no work at all. Unnaturally high minimum wages do.

In a civil "society" I agree there needs to be a safety net for those who cannot provide for themselves. An intelligently managed "society" should seek to minimize the necessity of this application. Artificially high minimum wages do not accomplish this... and in many ways accomplish the opposite. An example proposal of effective societal management can be found under the heading "more progressive version" HERE :wink:

I get a charge out of those educated who declare that we uneducated, unwashed citizens don't understand our economic system. The driving force of our system was competition, but conserative government has destroyed competition by allowing big business to become multinationals who can set prices to whatever it wants it to be. There used to be thousands of oil companies but are now only hundreds. All business has become like the oil business. Just a few companies control all businesses.

rebel, You're actually wrong; small businesses makes up most of the US economy. Small companies make up the largest ratio of the US economy.

Many visitors from abroad are surprised to learn that even today, the U.S. economy is by no means dominated by giant corporations. Fully 99 percent of all independent enterprises in the country employ fewer than 500 people. These small enterprises account for 52 percent of all U.S. workers, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Some 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. By contrast, 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees.

Agreed. Your assertion is confirmed on the thread that I started, titled "Is the Liberal Political Mind one Dimensional?" My premise there is that many effects are related, so that most issues should never be viewed as a single dimension by themselves. Many people may view the minimum wage laws by themselves, as if it does not affect anything else. After all, why isn't it good and decent that people can make more money? My question is, "why not raise the minimum wage to at least $20 per hour then? Wouldn't that be a better wage than $7 and change? The answer to that question of course exposes the fallacy of the scheme to set an artificial wage in the first place. It is nothing more than something to make certain politicians feel better about themselves, but accomplishes little or nothing positive.

Re: Minimum Wage


Cyclops, has this been posted? Go down the page to the graph titled:
Unemployment Compared to Minimum Wage (in 2001 dollars)

http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/american_income_taxation.htm

The graph does not prove anything very well, but if you consider higher minimum wage levels as one of the drivers of higher unemployment rates, you would also expect a lag time between the peaks, with minimum wage peaks preceding the unemployment highs, which does occur on the graph, but not well, as it looks to me like the lag time is too long to make a good argument for that? And of course, there are other factors that probably control unemployment to a greater extent.

I do not think the minimum wage levels have ever been set high enough in this country to drastically affect unemployment rates, but if they were, they definitely would.

Re: Minimum Wage


In most cases, the equilibrium wage is above the minimum wage already (look at many places advertising now with beginning wages above the minimum wage amounts), so in most situations it really hasn't had much of an impact, if any. It is simply a feel good, look good thing politicians push.

Republicans block minimum wage increase
WASHINGTON ?- At first, legislation to raise the minimum wage loomed as a clean, quick triumph for Democrats eager to celebrate their new majority in Congress. Two months later, it stands as an early lesson in the limits of their power.

A cohesive Republican minority backed by the White House, the Senate's complex rules and internal divisions among Democrats have combined to slow the measure's progress since it cleared its first hurdle in mid-January.

While final passage is highly probable, Democrats and their allies in organized labor long ago capitulated to GOP demands, agreeing to accept business-friendly tax cuts as the price for the first minimum wage increase in a decade.

"The minimum wage-tax relief package was a good early lesson for them as to how things will work," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said with a chuckle in a recent interview.


"What the Democratic House is having to learn is what the majority, particularly a narrow majority, means in the Senate. Not much is likely to go through the Senate exactly the way they would like it to," McConnell said.

Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 House Republican leader, concurred. "They're going to find it extremely hard to not only pass things over here but certainly to put anything on the president's desk that changes the country the way they want to change it," he said.

There is ample evidence that Democrats and their allies understand.

So much so that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who once publicly insisted on a stand-alone minimum wage bill, privately has prodded Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to strike the best tax-cut compromise possible and quickly send the bill to President Bush.

"In moving so fast, we gave the impression it was easy," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, reflecting not only on the minimum wage bill, but several other measures that newly empowered Democrats passed in January, only to see them stack up in the Senate.

Some Democrats say the struggle over the minimum wage bill is likely to become a model over the next two years for working within divided government.

Republicans and Democrats say they can envision compromises on several issues as the president and Democrats seek accomplishments. Immigration and energy fall into this category.

But Bush has threatened to veto House-passed bills expanding federally funded research of embryonic stem cells and allowing the government to negotiate directly with manufacturers for Medicare drug prices.

Already, events in the Senate show the difficulty Democrats will have forcing Bush to change his Iraq war policy.

McConnell blocked action on a nonbinding Democratic measure critical of administration policy. He acted after Reid, D-Nev., refused to give equal treatment to a GOP proposal regarding money for the troops.

The White House was quick to issue a veto threat last week when Pelosi, D-Calif., announced legislation that would require the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008.

The speaker sounded undeterred. "The House has to lead," she told moderates at a private meeting, according to participants.

It was Pelosi who elevated the minimum wage legislation in political importance, placing it on a list of six bills to be passed within the first 100 hours of the new Congress.

"For 10 years the lowest-paid Americans have been frozen out," Democratic Rep. George Miller of California said as the House debated the measure, criticizing Republicans who had refused for years to allow a vote on a stand-alone minimum wage.

GOP lawmakers wanted to add tax cuts to shield business from higher labor costs. "The small businessmen we are trying to help for the most part are little guys," said Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif.

Democrats refused and the House, by a 315-116 vote Jan. 10, passed a bill that would raise the hourly minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years.

In the Senate, Reid also wanted a stand-alone measure. But he had already concluded it was impossible.

Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had been at work for weeks with Republicans drafting tax cuts for business. "Let us raise the minimum wage. Let us help small businesses cope," said Baucus, D-Mont., who is seeking a new term in 2008.

Equally important, Senate rules gave Republicans leverage their House counterparts lacked. After a quiet head count, Reid concluded the bill could not overcome a filibuster that Republicans had threatened if tax cuts were not included.

"If it takes adding small business tax cuts to have a minimum wage increase, then we'll do that," he told reporters on Jan. 5. It was a signal that Democratic House leaders chose to ignore.

Their promise to voters in 2006 had been "raising the minimum wage, not raising the minimum wage with something with it," explained California Rep. Xavier Becerra, a member of the House Democratic leadership.

In the Senate, liberals were irritated with Baucus. At one private meeting of the rank and file, they vented their frustration. According to several officials, Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan spoke out against early concessions to Republicans.

Reid replied there was nothing he could do without 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, these officials said.

In public, Reid maneuvered for political gain, calling for a vote on a stand-alone minimum wage bill that he knew he would lose. Predictably, Republicans held together and bottled up the measure, 54-43.

While the shadowboxing unfolded, Baucus and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, had made progress toward a compromise. But Senate rules required _ and Pelosi had decreed _ that no legislation would pass if it raised the budget deficit.

That meant Congress, in order to raise the minimum wage, would have to increase taxes so it could cut them.

Baucus and Grassley eventually settled on $8.3 billion in tax cuts over 10 years and proposed closing tax shelters to make up much of the money.

The Senate bill passed, 94-3, on Feb. 1, almost three weeks after the House acted.

Bush quickly made clear he wanted tax cuts. "The Senate has taken a step toward helping maintain a strong and dynamic labor market and promoting continued economic growth," he said in a statement.

For his part, labor's Sweeney pledged to "turn up the volume" in hopes of persuading Congress to jettison the tax cuts.

Now House Democrats delayed.

New York Rep. Charles Rangel, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he would block the Senate bill because it violated a constitutional requirement for revenue-raising legislation to originate in the House.

Days later, in a moment rich with political irony, the 36-year veteran Democratic lawmaker from Harlem announced that the first tax cuts to move through his committee would help business.

It was a grudging surrender.

Rangel presented a tax cut far smaller than Republicans wanted, $1.3 billion over 10 years, designed to encourage the hiring of low-skilled workers.

In a gesture of bipartisanship, Rangel offered to let Republicans help draft the measure. They accepted. "I made the calculation that the bill was going to be written with me or without me," said Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the committee's Republican.

The bill passed, 360-45, on Feb. 16, five weeks after Democratic leaders initially had rejected tax cuts on the minimum wage bill.

Then Senate Republicans asserted their prerogatives once again.

Grassley said he would not allow the appointment of negotiators on a House-Senate compromise until Democrats disclosed in general terms what the final legislation would include.

"Contours of the deal should be known if details can't be," said the Iowa Republican, noting that he was doing what Democrats had done when the GOP held a majority in recent years.

Unofficial talks drifted. Pelosi and Reid discussed a new strategy.

The House would add the minimum wage measure to a must-pass bill providing money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Modest tax cuts would be included.

The next move is up to the Republicans.