Raise the minimum wage?

[Pwnius Scrubius]

The problem with raising the minimum wage to any level......within a year, that level will become the new poverty level. Also, once the minimum wage goes up, companies/businesses will want to maintain the same margin of profit which means......to offset their new payroll increase, they will increase the price of their products. What does this mean to the middle class......their money will be worth less. If someone makes $40k/year now and say $100/week on groceries, or $5200/ year thats what about 13% of their annual income. Now when the prices go up, say your new grocery bill is now $125/week, or $6500/year, thats now just over 16% of their annual budget. Might not seem like much, but that is only area of ones expenses. If all the other areas of their budget goes up by 3-5% minimum, transportation, education, insurances, etc. Starts cutting into what that person might have been putting toward savings/retirement which means what......people will have to work longer before they can retire. So in my mind, the poverty level will rise with the new minimum wage which means the middle class will shrink. The new minimum wage might help those folks for about a year or so.....but once prices start to go up, they'll just be screaming for another increase.

This is what happen in Victorian England, high minium wage so the rich people raise prices. simple.

[Grillick]

@Grillick, people working full time/min wage don't qualify for welfare. People that don't work take far more of our tax money than this 1%. This 1% is just an ineffective, potentially catastrophic target for rapid change.

False.

 

To qualify for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, a person must earn less than 130% of the poverty line. For a single-member household, that translates to $7.58/hour. For larger households, the number increased substantially.

 

Look, if you want to argue that raising the minimum wage isn't the most effective way to combat inequality, that's fine. But you really need to stop pretending that an increase in the minimum wage has any realistic probability of being catastrophic. That's simply an absurd position.

[Morgan]

Minimum wage discourages competitive pay. Why do more than the minimum requirements when you're guaranteed $7.25 an hour just like the other guys and gals working with you?

Edited December 6, 2014 by Morgan

[Greatnate]

Minimum wage discourages competitive pay. Why do more than the minimum requirements when you're guaranteed $7.25 an hour just like the other guys and gals working with you?

 

Because your company will fire you and replace you with with another minimum wage work as soon as they think you're slacking or might be due for a raise?

[Willam von Waldreich]

Minimum wage discourages competitive pay. Why do more than the minimum requirements when you're guaranteed $7.25 an hour just like the other guys and gals working with you?

 

Minimum wage could be looked at in two different competing lights, one could argue that it was designed by the Corporation to ensure that they didn't have to pay you really any more then what was legally bound to. If a company said you only needed minimum wage...the law supports that. Others can argue that it was designed to ensure that the workers got enough money from said companies to equal their true compensation....nothing worse then doing 9$ worth of work to get paid 3$ for it. Either way minimum wage is a crutch. Logically a Living Wage would make sense. You make a bare minimum to survive on (I will amend my statement of a family of 3 to a family of 2 I'll explain why shortly) this means matching the wages to Standard of Living, which varies State to State which means like the current Minimum wage system it would vary from State to State.

 

If the Standard of Living is 10$ an hour, for a family of 2 then you make minimum wage 10$ an hour. This means a person has enough money to live in an apartment setting with enough funds to pay rent and utilities, as well as food and gas for a vehicle. If both people in this unit are working then the extra funds can be used to buy luxuries or to go from an apartment setting to a small home with the hope of expanding.

 

There is a misconception that if a company pays its employee's more that said company will have to cut workers. This is not true, most companies report 15% to 25% profits per year...this is reported and may not be actual, meaning AFTER they pay all employee's and pay all bills and so on they make that much meaning that if they increase pay they may drop in % of profit but they will not go broke. Furthermore the more you pay a person the more they spend, the more they spend the more money companies make the more they can spend on...well hiring more people OR replacing them with robots so then unemployment goes up and more people need welfare assistance.

[Katsu Ochii]

It seems nuts to me that the minimum wage is not a living wage... Clearly it needs to be raised.

[Calm Dragon]

Most minimum wage jobs should only be a temporary thing. You just have to keep pushing yourself forward. For instance, I work at a Denny's and I bus tables. Yeah, it does suck making 7.50 an hour, but, I'm not going to do that forever. And it helps when you're renting a place with two other people.

[Morgan]

It seems nuts to me that the minimum wage is not a living wage... Clearly it needs to be raised.

Nobody has the money to pay all of their employees more. 

Most minimum wage jobs should only be a temporary thing. You just have to keep pushing yourself forward. For instance, I work at a Denny's and I bus tables. Yeah, it does suck making 7.50 an hour, but, I'm not going to do that forever. And it helps when you're renting a place with two other people.

You're right. Lots of people are becoming trapped in these jobs. That's another problem. 

[Solomon]

Those of you who think U.S. businesses can't afford to pay workers a reasonable wage should read this just-published report (PDF) by the OECD: http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/Focus-Inequality-and-Growth-2014.pdf

 

It details the connection between income inequality and economic growth, explains why, and suggests some policies to reduce income inequality. Can the U.S. afford NOT to significantly raise the minimum wage?