I've changed my mind about minimum wage (or saw the light)

[Levant]

Back in the late 1980s when I went broke and had to start over min wage was $4/hr IIRC.  There was a recession of course so jobs were hard to find.  Engineers were standing in line for truck washing jobs.

Anyway I got a temp job at a woodshop and then got hired full time (+) and shortly after offered a chance to run the spray booth evening/night shift, with a 50% raise.

There was a guy that started the same week that I did and about six months later he was complaining that he had never gotten a raise.  I told that if I was running the place that he would have been fired a long time ago 

I have a similar story.  I got out of the Navy in October 1982 and moved to Wyoming.  I couldn't find a decent electronics job so I took a job at a feed mill while I continued to look.  I worked for 2 months at the feed mill before finally getting a field engineer job with a major communications company.  In the two months I worked at the feed mill I learned the entire operation.  I was quicker and more accurate in my work than any of the employees who had been there 10 or more years.  When I got the field engineer job the feed mill owner offered me almost double what I had been making and more money than any of his other non-sales employees.  Why?  Because I worked harder than any employee he had - not just labor but in understanding the business and how to make it better.

There are employers who are jerks - or should I say idiots - who just don't recognize the value of hard work and will always pay the bare minimum but those employers aren't the limiting factor for workers; their own ambition and willingness to work is what makes or breaks them.

[dogmush]

The other side of making min wage jobs more expensive to employers is that they will find cheaper ways to do the work and then the jobs won't exist at any wage.

http://news.cnet.com/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screen-cashiers/8301-17938_105-20063732-1.html

[MechAg94]

My concern is that this would just cause the price of lots of little things to go up push inflation up even higher, and then making that extra money worth less. 

Also Nancy Pelosi will likely add a clause again to exempt certain South Pacific islands where Starkist has canning factories. 

[Tallpine]

The other side of making min wage jobs more expensive to employers is that they will find cheaper ways to do the work and then the jobs won't exist at any wage.

http://news.cnet.com/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screen-cashiers/8301-17938_105-20063732-1.html

It just won't be the same great fast food experience without the nose rings and tongue piercings 

[Scout26]

The other side of making min wage jobs more expensive to employers is that they will find cheaper ways to do the work and then the jobs won't exist at any wage.

http://news.cnet.com/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screen-cashiers/8301-17938_105-20063732-1.html

Pepsico experimented with this in the early 90's, at that time the main problems were 1)  AlGore had just invented the Interwebznet, but most people still used AOL so were confused by the touch screens and generally boggled their orders (I only wanted three tacos, not 300!) and 2) It was also pre-debit cards, so someone still had to be at the counter to take the money (and make change), not just hand out food.  Whatever time and labor savings were supposed to had, never materialized.

Now that people are more familiar with using technology and the advent of debit cards, I definitely see the decline of the nose-pierced, face tattooed cashier, and the only person/people behind the counter will be those that hand out your food (although that may become automated as well.) 

[Boomhauer]

I wish they would bring those kiosks here. I bet I could put the order in correctly then vs. relying on cashiers who only understand ebonics. (Seriously HOW *expletive deleted*ing HARD IS "No onions" to understand?)

[Scout26]

I'll take your onions,  put them on my burger !!!

[freakazoid]

Onions are gross.

I just had a thought. Maybe they actually know that it won't actually help people, that all it will do is things like raise the price of foods, so they aren't really becoming richer. But, it's not like people who make decent money are going to have their wages raised, theirs will stay the same while the price of things has gone up. So what is really happening is not that the low wage people are having their wages raised, but the more upper class are having theirs lowered.

[zxcvbob]

The overall moral problem with the minimum wage is that it violates the rights of employers and employees to exchange labor for wages, or vice versa, on terms both agree to. That can take the form of preventing employers from employing unskilled labor, or, like you said, it can take the form of forcing employers to pay more than someone's labor is worth.

Minimum wage is one area where I disagree with the Republican and Libertarian party lines.

You are assuming the employers will negotiate in good faith.  The people affected by the MW generally have very little bargaining power or negotiating skills.  The bossman holds all the cards and will typically exploit the workers given a chance.

It doesn't force the employer to pay anything; he can do the work himself.

[zahc]

The people affected by the MW generally have very little bargaining power or negotiating skills.  The bossman holds all the cards and will typically exploit the workers given a chance.

And that is called 'life', which is not fair.

Personally, I am glad that I am allowed by my government to be exploited for my current wage. I am glad that I get to choose the level of exploitation I am willing to trade for a certain amount of money.

It doesn't force the employer to pay anything; he can do the work himself.

This is nonsense. It forces him to pay above-market wages, or seen another way, it bans employees from competing on wages, which is the entire point of the law. Why else would the law exists?

[cordex]

Minimum wage is like any other government price-control program: It distorts the market and the effects are mostly bad.  It provides incentive to business-owners to automate and increases the barrier for low-skill workers entering the job market.

You are assuming the employers will negotiate in good faith.  The people affected by the MW generally have very little bargaining power or negotiating skills.  The bossman holds all the cards and will typically exploit the workers given a chance.

It is no different than any other employment negotiation.  It's mostly an issue of supply and demand.

Let's say that a particular employee is extremely talented at their profession and would bring a lot of potential value to a business.  During the hiring process they ask the employer for a high wage and get it.  Are they exploiting the business owners?  Why or why not?

It doesn't force the employer to pay anything; he can do the work himself.

Sure, the boss can do that work, thus eliminating someone's job. 
Or the he can automate the job and reduce the overall workforce by that much more. 
Or charge the consumer more, reducing the number of people who can afford the product.
Or reduce the workforce and increase the workload for the remaining employees.
Or go out of business, eliminating all of that employer's jobs.

None of these sound like a win in my book.

[Levant]

Minimum wage is one area where I disagree with the Republican and Libertarian party lines.

You are assuming the employers will negotiate in good faith.  The people affected by the MW generally have very little bargaining power or negotiating skills.  The bossman holds all the cards and will typically exploit the workers given a chance.

It doesn't force the employer to pay anything; he can do the work himself.

So how do you feel about collective bargaining?  It's simply a negotiation.

[Tallpine]

Minimum wage is like any other government price-control program: It distorts the market and the effects are mostly bad.  It provides incentive to business-owners to automate and increases the barrier for low-skill workers entering the job market.

As do income and social security taxes and all the recording/reporting.

[MillCreek]

Minimum wage is like any other government price-control program: It distorts the market and the effects are mostly bad.  It provides incentive to business-owners to automate and increases the barrier for low-skill workers entering the job market. 

On that note, I just read in the paper that a professor at WSU is getting grants to come up with an automated apple picker for the apple orchards.  Picking apples is very big in Eastern Washington.

[freakazoid]

Minimum wage is one area where I disagree with the Republican and Libertarian party lines.

You are assuming the employers will negotiate in good faith.  The people affected by the MW generally have very little bargaining power or negotiating skills.  The bossman holds all the cards and will typically exploit the workers given a chance.

It doesn't force the employer to pay anything; he can do the work himself.

That's is what REAL unions are for.

[cordex]

As do income and social security taxes and all the recording/reporting.

Yep.

[zxcvbob]

So how do you feel about collective bargaining?  It's simply a negotiation.

There's not a good answer to that.  Big labor unions are as evil and corrupt as big corporations -- but both might be necessary evils.  (a bit of "Golden Rule" on both sides would eliminate the need for minimum wage laws, OSHA, and labor unions.  But that'll never happen on a large scale because people suck)

[wmenorr67]

My take on it is this, give them $15 a hour.  Then when the price of a hamburger is $20 at McDonald's, people stop buying them and the place goes out of business and then you lose you part time job.  Then what do you do?

[zahc]

My take on it is this, give them $15 a hour.  Then when the price of a hamburger is $20 at McDonald's, people stop buying them and the place goes out of business and then you lose you part time job.

The above phenomenon has ALREADY happened due to the current minimum wage, and there are ALREADY an unknown number of businesses and jobs that do not currently exist because they are not viable under the current minimum wage.

Your analysis is essentially correct, but your number is arbitrary. If your numbers are correct, and McDonalds is not viable at a minimum wage of $15, then imagine if minimum wage was actually $15. We would just not have McDonalds, and just wouldn't know what we are missing, because that business would just not exist.

[Levant]

There's not a good answer to that.  Big labor unions are as evil and corrupt as big corporations -- but both might be necessary evils.  (a bit of "Golden Rule" on both sides would eliminate the need for minimum wage laws, OSHA, and labor unions.  But that'll never happen on a large scale because people suck)

Not to threadjack my own thread but I agree.  Organized labor is responsible for the 40 hour work week, weekends off, and even health care from employers.  Many conservatives despise unions but they really do love the benefits they got from unions.  I've never been in a union but I have had plenty of good, high-paying jobs, with good benefits that were so because the companies took care of their employees precisely to keep unions out so I've reaped the rewards.

Many so-called capitalists love spouting how an employment agreement is the result of a negotiation where the employer owns the money and the prospective employee exercises free will whether or not to accept employment on terms the employer offers yet they hate the idea of a bunch of employees getting together and hiring professional negotiators to speak for them.  Yet, as far as I know of, no employer was ever forced to sign an employment contract with a union.  They blame unions when times get bad but no one ever forced a company to sign a contract that would signal the end of the company.  Management would only ever sign a contract that they believed was good for the company and its shareholders, right?

I've never belonged to a union but I hope there will always be unions.  yes, some are corrupt.  Then again, there's Enron, Hostess, and others where management raided the pension funds of their employees to pay ridiculously high bonuses to management who bankrupt companies so corruption comes on both sides of the labor table.

[just Warren]

Not to threadjack my own thread but I agree.  Organized labor is responsible for the 40 hour work week, weekends off, and even health care from employers.  Many conservatives despise unions but they really do love the benefits they got from unions.  I've never been in a union but I have had plenty of good, high-paying jobs, with good benefits that were so because the companies took care of their employees precisely to keep unions out so I've reaped the rewards.

None of that is true. A brief overview.


In any event your working conditions are your responsibility. If your only option is to work at my hell-hole of a factory for whatever reason, that's your fault. Provided you are free to accept or decline employment offers. Obviously if you are being held as a slave or are working under coercion than that is not on you.

A labor shortage cures all these problems. The more desperate for workers the better the offers employers have to make. So all laws, taxes and regulations that interfere with the market cause distortions that lead to job shortages. Unions support all manner of these distortions and have for over a century now so unions deserve no respect whatsoever. In fact they lie. They take credit for things they didn't do and brush off the reality that overall they've made things worse for far more people than have been made better off by their actions.

[TommyGunn]

Not to threadjack my own thread but I agree.  Organized labor is responsible for the 40 hour work week, weekends off, and even health care from employers.  Many conservatives despise unions but they really do love the benefits they got from unions.  I've never been in a union but I have had plenty of good, high-paying jobs, with good benefits that were so because the companies took care of their employees precisely to keep unions out so I've reaped the rewards.

Many so-called capitalists love spouting how an employment agreement is the result of a negotiation where the employer owns the money and the prospective employee exercises free will whether or not to accept employment on terms the employer offers yet they hate the idea of a bunch of employees getting together and hiring professional negotiators to speak for them.  Yet, as far as I know of, no employer was ever forced to sign an employment contract with a union.  They blame unions when times get bad but no one ever forced a company to sign a contract that would signal the end of the company.  Management would only ever sign a contract that they believed was good for the company and its shareholders, right?

And yet excessive union demands have put airlines out of business.
The reason unions form is to give the workers sufficient force to match them against the corporation/management.  Otherwise there would be little reason for management to "listen" to them other than simple humanity -- which DOES exist inside the corporate world but not in excessive quantity.
At one point in history unions were necessary because workers were pulling 7 day workweeks (it was common to get Sunday mornings off for church) and twelve hour or more workdays.  In this atmosphere it should be no wonder that unions formed.
However the "pendulum" has swung the other way, so to speak.  A great many unions forget they are not management and have become awfully demanding.  Refusing to believe the corporation doesn't have the financial wherewithal for a wage increase they will call or prolong strikes, further damaging the corporation's financial status and in the case of atleast one airline, eventually putting it out of business.
The 40 hour workweek and the 8 hour workday are now well established and unions are no longer needed to enforce them.  Insurance and other benies?  These were not union products.  During WW2 FDR froze wages and companies still had to hire, but couldn't offer higher wages than their competitors because of Czar Roosevelt's edict.  So instead they started offering benies like insurance to attract workers.  Oh, I don't doubt that unions love them, a LOT of people do.

I've never belonged to a union but I hope there will always be unions.  yes, some are corrupt.  Then again, there's Enron, Hostess, and others where management raided the pension funds of their employees to pay ridiculously high bonuses to management who bankrupt companies so corruption comes on both sides of the labor table.

I had to belong to a union when I worked part-time in a deli during college. IMHO it provided very little actual help other than lightening my paycheck -- the first of which was already lightened by virtue of the fact I'd started in midweek and it was only a partial check.  The bosses treated me very well at that job but I attributed that to the kind of people they were.  The Union boss drove around in -- get this and I am NOT joking --  a purple cadillac.  Ick.
As a union member I got one of their free monthly publications.  One common meme in it I recall well was that whenever they found a supermarket where there were no unions, a battlecry was instantly sounded to UNIONIZE THE BASTIDS!  The whole tone of the magazine was great offense that there were actually people working in supermarkets that DIDN'T want to be in a union.  Cuts down on the union dues they use to stuff their union cofferes with, ya know.
Most people who debate the issue use contemporary arguments.  Sure they don't bother to point out history.  I mean, look, I constantly complain about what a lousy president Obama is but that doesn't mean I bring Woodrow Wilson  or Garfield or U. S. Grant into the diatribe.
Decades ago unions were necessary to address horrible and unfair working conditions.  Most of their basic most useful improvements are now long established facts.  No longer are they so necessary, and this is reflected by the fact that  the percentage or workers represented by unions is far lower than it has been historically.
Unions; once necessary, now...not so much.

[MechAg94]

We don't begin to have the same business climate and treatment of workers that was active when unions were first formed. 

Also, with all due respect to the few out there that don't fit the norm, the worker entitlement mentality gets worse when seniority and unions rules means they can't be fired for poor work or less work.  To me,unions sort of assume workers are hard working and care about quality and do little to encourage it. 
All that stuff is there in non-union workers also, but the job security isn't the same. 

Of course, I am down here in Texas.  Most of my info on unions is 2nd hand.  The unions I have direct contact with are journeymen unions not closed shops.  With those, it all depends on who is doing the work, just like everyone else. 

[Levant]

None of that is true. A brief overview.


In any event your working conditions are your responsibility. If your only option is to work at my hell-hole of a factory for whatever reason, that's your fault. Provided you are free to accept or decline employment offers. Obviously if you are being held as a slave or are working under coercion than that is not on you.

A labor shortage cures all these problems. The more desperate for workers the better the offers employers have to make. So all laws, taxes and regulations that interfere with the market cause distortions that lead to job shortages. Unions support all manner of these distortions and have for over a century now so unions deserve no respect whatsoever. In fact they lie. They take credit for things they didn't do and brush off the reality that overall they've made things worse for far more people than have been made better off by their actions.

What you're describing is a labor union.  If a whole bunch of employees decide to reject the working conditions and negotiate as a group and then management voluntarily agrees to sign a contract with them, that's what we call collective bargaining.  Of course if we take the employees one small person at a time against a huge corporation then the little voice has no power and his quitting doesn't have any impact.  Think of unions as corporations with talent for sale and when two parties voluntarily contract to use that labor, that's capitalism at its finest.

But, somehow, many capitalists never look at it that way.

The page you linked is full of abstract generalized statements trying to imply that working conditions, safety, work hours, and life in general is better because of the generosity of corporations - but it is completely devoid of documented facts.

Here's a page with documented facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States

[cordex]

Think of unions as corporations with talent for sale and when two parties voluntarily contract to use that labor, that's capitalism at its finest.

• Longstanding association with organized crime.
• Using violence, intimidation and property destruction to prevent companies from voluntarily contracting with non-union labor.
• Using force of law to make non-union labor pay union dues or join unions.
• Using intimidation to force non-union labor to join unions.
• Using union dues to buy influence with socialist politicians to enact leftist legislation.

Capitalism at its finest?