[caveBEAR]

Originally Posted by birdman

If you are over the age of 18 and you make minimum wage, you are doing something wrong.

aaaah gee thanks b-man, good to know you care.

[suicidesaints]

Originally Posted by birdman

If you are over the age of 18 and you make minimum wage, you are doing something wrong.

I agree to an extent. I don't work for minimum wage, but I know people who do... or would if they could even find work.

The problem is that (even if it's a small percentage of people) there are uneducated, disabled, etc... people out there that need to be able to support themselves. Just because they are less fortunate, doesn't mean they should have no chance at ever bettering themselves.

Let's assume that someone is raised in a broken home, doesn't finish high school, and is forced to raise themselves. They are basically doomed to work at a minimum wage job unless they can somehow work their way up (by doing a good job, furthering their skills/education, etc...) The only problem is that this person is making just enough money to scrape by... leaving them with little to nothing to go back to school or save up...

I agree that if you work hard and really want to succeed, that you can, but even with perseverance, it's incredibly difficult to work your way up from minimum wage

[suicidesaints]

Originally Posted by kyle is hk

What would be the cons of tying minimum wage to the relative size of the company?

The cons would be that everyone and their brother would be trying to get a job at Wal-Mart and no one would want to work at Joe's Corner Store

[Jake Gyllenhaal]

Originally Posted by kyle is hk

Not sure if serious, but that's definitely a large portion.

Taken from an op-ed:

Quote:

But look a little more closely at the figures. Of those at or below minimum wage some 39% are in food prep and related industries. This includes all of your friendly neighborhood waiters and bartenders and we all know absolutely that they’re not living purely on their wages. We rather get reminded of this when we foreigners forget to leave them a tip (I have actually had a waiter in NYC tell me, as I was sitting down, that he had to tell me as a foreigner that a 20% tip was normal). Indeed I’ve done the job myself for a couple of years and no one at all goes into that industry for the joy of the paycheck. It’s the tips that matter and they make minimum wage an irrelevance (I suspect even more than used to be true in the place I worked. The Motley Fool HQ is now across the street which should do wonders for tip income). Another 17% are in sales and related jobs. Again, no one is doing that sort of work for minimum wage without there being a commission system on top.
Another way of slicing the same numbers is that 50% or so of those on minimum wage are 24 or under: students and trainees in effect.
Changing the wages paid of that over 50% of minimum wage earners who get tips or commission on top of the minimum wage really isn’t going to change inequality very much. Or another way of looking at this is that once you take out those for whom minimum wage is just a basic, before tips and or commissions, we end up talking about 3% or so of hourly paid workers, or something like 1.5% of the total workforce.

There, I just reduced the minimum wage earners to 1.5% of the work force. Is that still a "large portion"?

[kyle is hk]

Originally Posted by Jake Gyllenhaal

Taken from an op-ed:

There, I just reduced the minimum wage earners to 1.5% of the work force. Is that still a "large portion"?

Why does it matter how large the portion is?

[birdman]

Originally Posted by kyle is hk

What do you say about areas where a store like Walmart comes in and monopolizes all the unskilled jobs and effectively lowering the average wage of the area?

I would ask how much to propose we pay an unskilled worker to work a cash register?

[kyle is hk]

Originally Posted by suicidesaints

The cons would be that everyone and their brother would be trying to get a job at Wal-Mart and no one would want to work at Joe's Corner Store

But there isn't an infinite amount of jobs, so many would be forced to go to Joe's Corner store no? Instead of 10 people making minimum youd have 3 making minimum and 7 making more than minimum?

[kyle is hk]

Originally Posted by birdman

I would ask how much to propose we pay an unskilled worker to work a cash register?

Its my job to ask the questions birdbro.

What if (not saying it is or isnt) a states minimum wage is not mathematically high enough to allow someone to afford to better their education and get a better job?

[Jake Gyllenhaal]

Originally Posted by kyle is hk

Why does it matter how little the portion is?

Because raising the minimum wage will pass on the costs onto the consumers. Why should we risk lowering consumer confidence and potentially harm the economy if we only give 1.5% of the workforce a pay raise?

[kyle is hk]

Originally Posted by knash9

I would think it would stabilize eventually . Either way, a full-time job should not allow you to still be below the poverty level. Attaching it to something allows, the minimum wage to change more frequently and more accurately as opposed to waiting for congress and the White House to do something.

And why wouldn't this cause terrible inflation?

[kyle is hk]

Originally Posted by Jake Gyllenhaal

Because raising the minimum wage will pass on the costs onto the consumers. Why should we risk lowering consumer confidence and potentially harm the economy if we only give 1.5% of the workforce a pay raise?

This could be a dangerous line of thinking if you look at it from a social perspective.

[lp670sv]

Just some background information, in 1968 the adjusted value of the minimum wage was $10.64.
In 1981 the minimum wage was $3.35 ($8.46 today), by the time it was raised in 1990 the minimum wage was down to the equivalent of $5.88 today).
In 1997 it was raised to $5.50 ($7.87). When it was raised in 2007 the adjusted value of the minimum wage was down to $6.09.
The minimum wage of $7.50 when it was introduced had purchasing power of $8.30 today.
So essentially for most of the last 40 years the minimum wage has actually been reduced. The current minimum wage is 30% below what it was worth in 1968.

[Jake Gyllenhaal]

Originally Posted by kyle is hk

This could be a dangerous line of thinking if you look at it from a social perspective.

Do you want to pay $10 for a hamburger just so McDonald's worker gets a 20% increase?

[birdman]

Originally Posted by kyle is hk

Its my job to ask the questions birdbro.

What if (not saying it is or isnt) a states minimum wage is not mathematically high enough to allow someone to afford to better their education and get a better job?

I would counter by saying that minimum wage is a starting point mostly enjoyed by by those working their first part-time jobs under the age of 18.

So if you have work experience and are over the age of 18 and you are still stuck at minimum wage, then in my experience, there is something you aren't doing right. I stopped making minimum wage when I was 15, I have never known a single person over the age of 18 who made minimum wage.

And to clarify, servers do not make minimum wage, they make a lot more than that with tips.

[caveBEAR]

Originally Posted by Jake Gyllenhaal

Do you want to pay $10 for a hamburger just so McDonald's worker gets a 20% increase?

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