Can America afford to pay a higher minimum wage?

do you own a business or work in a corporation? i do..

you know, i can get someone in India for 15-25k a year that does as good a job or even better than someone in US for 65-85k a year. Your min wage increases are just going to employ more in India and less here. You need to run a business or hire people in a company... seems you don't. what do you do for a living?

 

Actually that is in no way how the world actually works. A country that forces it’s citizens to do its will by taking their property does not value its citizens at all. There is nothing good in that.
It does not value the concept of property rights therefore does not value the lives of those who produce wealth.
Sure if you choose to be a parasite and do nothing but enjoy the labor of others- move somewhere where slavery is legal.
Otherwise as an American you’ll have to actually PURSUE your happiness the right way. Earn it.

 

If the ER is too expensive then sorry you’ll have to buy health insurance. Welcome to the real world where you have to pay people for their efforts.
You guys all want a college degree, but none of you want to pay someone who has one.
Makes no sense.

 

Perhaps crap wouldn’t be so expensive if all of you clowns didn’t demand so much free crap.
By the way the wealthiest people in the world are liberals. Man up and Go bang on their door and beg for money instead of asking the government to loot it from working families.
Go get you some Obacare mooch your neighbor’s wifi and be happy.

 

Whatever helps

 

Ahh, the old slippery slope logical fallacy.

No, we're just talking about the minimum wage, nothing more, which prevents corporations from paying $2 per day, 16 hours per day, 6 days per week.

 

The point is if the upper half owns 98% of the nation's wealth, and the bottom half owns only 2%, I should think it is very likely America can afford to pay a minimum wage that is enough to live on.

Now, what part of that of that concept is incomprehensible?

 

No, because they can pay more, if they want. By that definition, it cannot be 'fixed'.

People are not chattel, sorry.

Treating people like chattel is why it leads to exploitation. No wonder you can't understand the concept.

No one is suggesting it, so why are you?

 

65-85k a year is not minimum wage so that's part of this argument.

It was $10 an hour ( adjusting for inflation ) in the 60s, and unemployment was less than 4%, for years.

I operated a photography business with 3 employees for about 15 years. I ran an auto detailing business with 2 employees for 5 years. I owned a few taxicabs and ice cream trucks back in the 70s for a few years. I had a Swarovski crystal jewelry distributorship for few years with a few employees. I worked as a salesman, as an independent contractor much of my life. I'm also a jazz musician having to hire other band members, which is a side line. In fact, I've only had a 9 to 5 job once in my entire life, when I got out of high school.

Nick Hanauer, an investment banker, a plutocrat, an above 1%er, who has funded over 30 successful corporations, argues for a livable minimum wage.




This idea that to be successful in business you have to be a 'conservative' is nonsense. Look at Warren Buffet, Lee Ioccoca, given what they've expressed on these subjects in the past, I should think they would agree with Nick.

 

You know what I mean.

but, I guess not.

 

I think Nick has all the right answers you are looking for.

 

They do.

 

Then that makes you the problem.

 

Think about WHY productivity went up.

It wasn't an increase in direct labor from the worker, it had to do with technology and industrialization of certain sectors. Capital investment of the employer.

 

Absolutely. But that doesn't mean business doesn't have enough money to pay more to the remaining employees.

 

So do you know the net profits of said businesses? The cost and ongoing costs of the equipment and technology that increased the productivity?

An employee's wages, unless they are paid by piece, is not normally based on 'productivity' but the value of the goods or services they physically produce. The more people that can produce the same thing, the lower the value of the productivity.

 

Can America afford to pay a higher minimum wage?

Generally speaking YES.

This is true of large employers where the slice of the profit pie paid to employees has been shrinking for decades.

It is decreasingly true, becoming a firm NO, as the size and resources of an employer become smaller. What a McDonald's could easily afford to do is not the same thing as what a small family owned restaurant could afford to do at all without going under.

That is the problem. How to protect the smallest businesses while forcing the large and very wealthy players out of their pretend space of poverty and into paying their people a proper wage?

 

I would think they didn't spend money on automation just for fun.

Really?

 

So how can you judge who can or cannot 'afford to pay people more'? if you don't know the costs involved, or the value of the productivity?

 

What you are proposing is a race to the bottom.
If they can't afford minimum wage and can't price in the increase they should probably find another line of work.

 

Actually productivity is money in money out. If an employer cuts the wages of his workers yet still makes as much money, his productivity goes up. If he raises his prices but does not give his employees a raise, his productivity goes up. Rising productivity has a lot to do with wage stagnation.

 

I agree. If one can not run a profitable business without paying employees bare minimum wages, then perhaps that is a business that should not exist.

 

I haven't made minimum wage since the first 90 days of my first job 49 years ago. Do you still make just minimum wage?

2.3 percent of the workforce makes minimum wage

The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 2.7 percent in 2016 to 2.3 percent in 2017. This remains well below the percentage of 13.4 recorded in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.

Characteristics of minimum wage workers, 2017 : BLS Reports ...
https://www.bls.gov › opub › reports › minimum-wage

Why do employers pay the other 97.7 percent more than minimum wage?

 

Employers pay the minimum they can get away with.