$15 minimum wage...I know I'm poking the bear, but...

[the_std]

I know this thread hasn't been active lately, but I saw a post that I thought summed up the feelings of people who are pro-living-wage.

[s_stabeler]

exactly- what a lot of workers who oppose minimum wage increases because it would put them on minimum wage fail to realize is that they are ALSO underpaid- it's just that the priority is to ensure people have sufficient to live on - the minimum wage is basically a band-aid to ensure that people are at least paid enough to live on until the far bigger structural problems can be addressed (the fact that quite a few employers abuse the amount of power they have in wage negotiations- I don't want to get into a massive argument, but nobody can deny that a GOOD union does a lot to prevent an employer abusing their employees.)

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah. He gets it. He understands that the idea of being paid enough to live on isn't about counting coup on your fellow wage slaves, but about being able to live beyond day-to-day survival.

[BrenDAnn]

An interesting bit that I'll drop here, pertaining to the $15/hr wage. They enacted it in Seattle. It has, so far, had unexpected, and interesting, results.

[jedimaster91]

^ Can't say that surprises me at all. Those programs are meant to help the poor. Now that they're making $15/hr, they're not "poor" anymore. Which is exactly what the wage hike intended. But now they make too much money for government assistance programs. So they want less hours to make less money so they can stay on assistance. I don't doubt that in some markets, a full-time job making $15/hr still isn't enough. Increasing the wages isn't addressing the ones who fall somewhere in the middle. They make enough money on paper, but in reality can barely get by.

Another thing the article mentions is businesses closing or imposing price increases on the customers to keep enough money coming in to pay the workers. Another thing I could have told you would happen. Sure it's going to affect megacorps like MalWart less than your Mom and Pop businesses, but it's simple economics. Having to spend more to pay your staff means there's less money to spend on other expenses. And businesses still need to make a profit. That's how they stay open. So smaller business owners have to make the tough choice to either run with fewer staff or close. Which puts someone out of a job and they're right back on government assistance.

The other part that concerns me is with increased pay for entry level jobs, at some point professions that require schooling, certification, and specialized skills (I'm thinking paramedics, armed forces, emergency services, etc) are also going to want more pay. Frankly they don't get paid enough as it is. So their pay increases. Which pushes pay grades above theirs higher. Costs to the consumer go up to compensate. And then we're right back where we started just with bigger numbers.

[Gravekeeper]

An interesting bit that I'll drop here, pertaining to the $15/hr wage. They enacted it in Seattle. It has, so far, had unexpected, and interesting, results.

I was a little confused there than I notice its Breitbart, gah. Brietbart referencing Fox no less. If you actually follow through on the other links they do not say what the article says they do. Forbes freely admits there is no evidence that the restaurant closures have anything to do with the wage hike and that its just conjecture. Additionally, the labour cost of absorbing the wage hike even if passed entirely on to the customer is about 4-5 cents on the dollar. AKA your $2 burger would cost $2.10. Woo.

The wage hike is also being phased in over the course of several years. It didn't suddenly happen overnight like this article implies. Small business are only required to meet the $15 minimum wage by 2021. Which is also why you might have people shying away to stay on benefits. Their pay went up by just enough to technically eliminate their benefits but not enough to lift them out of poverty. The current minimum is still just $11.

Though the only source for that claim is a non-profit nursing home. There are no verifiable claims of it occurring elsewhere. Its a popular talk show radio talking point ( surprise surprise ) but doesn't seem to have much real substance or fact behind it.

Not to mention the only source for and perpetuation of this story is across the conservative blog-o-sphere.

Now that they're making $15/hr, they're not "poor" anymore. Which is exactly what the wage hike intended. But now they make too much money for government assistance programs. So they want less hours to make less money so they can stay on assistance.

They're making $11 and spare us the undying myth of the Welfare Queen(tm). I'll never understand why some of you guys down there are so obsessed with the thought of poor people getting something they don't "deserve".

[BlaqueKatt]

^ Can't say that surprises me at all. Those programs are meant to help the poor. Now that they're making $15/hr, they're not "poor" anymore. Which is exactly what the wage hike intended. But now they make too much money for government assistance programs. So they want less hours to make less money so they can stay on assistance.

Except they AREN'T MAKING $15 AN HOUR FFS!

intentionally misleading article is misleading, to incite further poor shaming and hatred(keep fighting over those crumb piles). Yay for INTENTIONALLY leaving out FACTS to create outrage porn!

the workers are NOT making $15 an hour, a cursory search for "seattle minimum wage law 2015" gets this

the previous minimum wage in washington state was $9.47. The tiered increase has some workers(depending on business type*, as of April 1,2015) only making $0.53 more(extra $80/month for full time-before taxes), or $1.53 more
(extra $244/month for full time-before taxes), ($10/hr and $11/hr respectively-hardly $15). The workers making $10/hr now won't see $15/hr until 2021-or FIVE YEARS FROM NOW, those making $11/hr will see it in 2018.

Maybe fact check(seriously took under 10 seconds) before getting indignant about "see it's actually hurting them."

*the new law is explained fully here

As for restaurants closing, the actual owners say that's not the cause, but who are you going to believe? the ACTUAL PEOPLE RUNNING THE BUSINESSES, or the conservative pundits with an agenda, who are going off their beliefs(several articles have actually stated "I believe") that living wages are bad and haven't even bothered to talk to a single business owner?(for the record 27 new restaurants opened and seven closed this year as of march-on average around 400 close or change owners in the state of washington-source)

[Andara Bledin]

Welfare programs are great for helping people with nearly nothing not starve or be homeless, but there's a significant valley between "can't survive" and "can survive" where a person is making too much money to qualify for welfare but too little to actually pay all of their bills.

It's a perverse system that may not have been designed so, but has the actual effect of making it so that people who want to get off of welfare can't actually climb out on their own, but get to the upper end of the system and then have to take a major leap of faith and hope they don't fall back below where they started when most situations that raise their fortunes won't provide enough additional capital to do more than get them halfway past that gap.

[Kheldarson]

Welfare programs are great for helping people with nearly nothing not starve or be homeless, but there's a significant valley between "can't survive" and "can survive" where a person is making too much money to qualify for welfare but too little to actually pay all of their bills.

It's a perverse system that may not have been designed so, but has the actual effect of making it so that people who want to get off of welfare can't actually climb out on their own, but get to the upper end of the system and then have to take a major leap of faith and hope they don't fall back below where they started when most situations that raise their fortunes won't provide enough additional capital to do more than get them halfway past that gap.

Yep. Rinnaul and I are in that bubble. It makes it hard to make job decisions when you don't know if things will pan out or you'll be struggling for another year.

[Kara_CS]

Another thing the article mentions is businesses closing or imposing price increases on the customers to keep enough money coming in to pay the workers. Another thing I could have told you would happen. Sure it's going to affect megacorps like MalWart less than your Mom and Pop businesses, but it's simple economics. Having to spend more to pay your staff means there's less money to spend on other expenses. And businesses still need to make a profit. That's how they stay open. So smaller business owners have to make the tough choice to either run with fewer staff or close. Which puts someone out of a job and they're right back on government assistance.

I never tire of these talking points when discussing wage increases. Inevitably, someone will go on to claim that a Big Mac will cost $9 if McDonald's pays its employees $15 an hour. Except that simply will not happen. McDonald's already has the money to pay its employees more while keeping costs right where they are, but they give that money to their CEO in multi-million dollar "performance pay" packages every year. Their previous CEO, who resigned in January because of he consistently lost the company money since he began in 2011, received $40 million in "performance pay," despite the fact that his performance was abysmal. And then they decided to pay him another $3 million a few months ago to keep him around as a consultant. Let that sink in. They paid this man millions despite how much money he lost by trying to promote McDonald's as a healthy dining option and in damaging their biggest draw - the dollar menu (rebranding it as the Value Menu, which is the same thing but now everything costs roughly 50 cents more). And now they're paying him to advise the company with his ideas. His ideas which led to consistent financial losses during his time as CEO. Meanwhile, despite throwing millions and millions at this man for his poor performance, the price of a Big Mac has not seen a significant increase. But if they pay their workers more, that's where it will suddenly impact prices.

And then there's the other faithful argument. "But what about those poor mom and pop shops who can't afford to pay their employees more or give them health insurance and they'll have to close their doors?" Small businesses aren't as profitable because they tend to have higher prices. Better quality than big box stores, yes, but you pay for that quality. And the fact is that many people who don't shop at those small businesses as often or at all would like to shop there, but they can't afford to on their budget. But, when people earn more money, they spend more money. If they're barely making enough to cover their monthly bills and survival needs, of course they're shopping at Walmart. But when they earn more, they are able to spend more, putting that money into the profits of businesses, including small businesses they couldn't afford to shop from before, and those businesses become more profitable and are able to compensate their employees comfortably.

[jedimaster91]

Forgive me for reading the linked article and taking it at face value. My bad. *eyeroll*

Don't get me wrong, the minimum wage is horribly low and I'm not saying it shouldn't go up. I would be for a more gradual increase instead of suddenly doubling it. Regardless of whether or not the megacorps have the money already to increase wages, we all know most of them won't. And they will find loopholes to circumvent new government mandates. It's already happening with healthcare. The law says for anyone working over a certain amount of hours the employer must pay for healthcare. So megacorps schedule workers the bare minimum of hours they can get away with to avoid it. It happened to me (working full-time hours while technically being part-time with part-time benefits), it's happened to several members of my family and quite a few friends. To think the big businesses won't increase their prices to keep profit levels the same and/or not fully staff locations to cut labor costs seems horribly naive. Corporations are already leaning hard on store managers to keep labor costs as low as they can with huge bonus incentives to keep stores understaffed. You really think it won't get worse with higher labor costs and lowered productivity benchmarks?

Increasing an expense somewhere causes ripples. Some industries and areas will feel the effects more than others and it may take some time to see the full effects, but they're there. It's not necessarily an argument against raising minimum wage since cost of living keeps going up without pay raises to match, but it is something that needs to be watched carefully and kept in check.

Really it's a shame merit based pay doesn't work so well in reality. The staff at the Qdoba where I had lunch today was amazing and I would gladly pay them $15/hr. The McD's down the road that can't seem to understand the concept of a plain cheeseburger (why is meat, bun, cheese so hard?) or the Taco Bell near me that takes 30+ minutes to get me my food even when they're not busy, I would not.

[Andara Bledin]

I would be for a more gradual increase instead of suddenly doubling it.

Sooo... You're saying that they should be doing exactly what they're doing, then?

I was going to go through point by point, but I realized that it's the same stupid talking points that conservative fatcats keep spewing and naive consumers keep believing no matter how many times they get debunked.

Highlights:

The raise in minimum wage is being done gradually. If you don't know this by now, it's because you don't want to know it since it's been mentioned in this thread more than once.

Any raise in prices will be on the order of pennies, and anyone who can't afford to pay those pennies needs to reconsider their budget, especially if they're buying fast food.

Any business that can't survive while paying their workers a livable wage deserves to go under. It's harsh, but then so is reality. Nobody should be making a profit by cheating others. People who complain about having to pay their employees a living wage are greedy assholes and I hope every last one of them goes under. They're bastards.

Fun fact: when people think they're being abused, they do worse work. Costco and Sams Club are in the same business, but Costco pays their employees a decent wage and gets the same amount of work with only 90% of the employees. The reason your local MacDonald's and Taco Bell have shit employees is because that's how they treat them. Qdoba, meanwhile, likely pays better, and the service is better as a result. Simple cause and effect.

That anyone who isn't making enough to survive or is only making enough to barely survive or is being abused by their employer so the company can make more profits meanwhile would support their continued oppression baffles me. Head-in-the-sand ignorance coupled with loyalty to assholes who would grind you into the dirt. Makes no sense.

[Gravekeeper]

Forgive me for reading the linked article and taking it at face value. My bad. *eyeroll*

Dude, the article was on Brietbart. Brietbart. You can act indignant about it when its an article from the BBC. But Brietbart? Fuck yes you shouldn't be taking it at face value.

For Christ sakes the front headlines right now include: "CLIMATE CHANGE: THE HOAX THAT COSTS US $4 BILLION A DAY", a self masturbatory article celebrating Jon Stewart's departure as "Obama's puppet" and an article about how Obama is an anti-Semite.

So no, I will not forgive you for taking an article from Brietbart at face value =p

[HYHYBT]

And they will find loopholes to circumvent new government mandates. It's already happening with healthcare. The law says for anyone working over a certain amount of hours the employer must pay for healthcare. So megacorps schedule workers the bare minimum of hours they can get away with to avoid it.

There's a fix for that, if the government were willing to do it. The law that requires banks to report deposits over $10,000 also makes it illegal to structure your deposits to avoid any of them being that large. Why not use the same principle in other areas?

[BrenDAnn]

Alright. I apologize for linking an apparently shitty, unfounded article. I'll be over here hanging my head in shame if you need me. For what it's worth, I do support the minimum raise wage, and no, I don't believe the BS myths that some of you have so eloquently debunked.