Minimum Wage

[horhangi]

The minimum wage was, in my understanding never meant to be a wage to raise a family on, at least not in my lifetime. I have worked a minimum wage job for 6 months in my life. Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be an entry level job into the workforce, to a career.
A little history of me: I took classes my senior year In high school and stupidly took the first job offered as a lifeguard I was offered. Minimum wage at the time was about 3.2. I started work that summer at 6$ an hour. School started and my summer job was gone, but I found off season employment as lifeguard for about 5$ and hour. The only problem I had was hours were limited, so I found a second job, at minimum wage, then about 3.50$ an hour. That minimum wage job, at a movie theater raised my pay in 6 months to 3.75$ an hour. After 6 months the basic skills of working all positions were assumed to have been learned and so pay increased.
Those 6 months I worked at 3.50/hour are the only time I worked for minimum wage ever. That is what minimum wage is supposed to be: an entry level wage into the job market. Minimum wage is not intended to be a living wage, it is an entry level wage for the least skilled to enter the job market and learn the skills.
As an aside to the current 15$/hr minimum wage drive...this is going to kill above minimum wage jobs that are available to young but trained high school students and graduates. I worked for a city as a lifeguard, that city had the highest pay for lifeguards in the county aside from beaches. The current starting pay for a guard is 13$/ hr. Minimum wage in my state is currently 10.50$/ hr.
Minimum wage in my state is set to rise to 15$/ hr. This must drive up the pay for entry level lifeguards. Why? Lifeguards, even the 16 year old teaching your child to swim and the 16 year old sitting in the chair watching those lessons are professionals. They have mandated levels of training and certification which must be maintained, training which must be conducted during employment, legal requirements to provide aid and are by law first responders. It is an entry level opportunity to a professional career even if used as a step to another career, which is what most do.
A raise in the minimum wage, results in a necessary raise in the wage of these jobs. The city I worked for, like many others is dealing with budget shortfalls and staff reductions. Raising the minimum wage to 15$/hr requires raising the wages of everyone. To pay for that requires raising the price of the services provided, which really offsets the benefit of raising the minimum wage. Further raising the minimum wage will result in fewer 16year olds being hired to work in a job that can be their introduction into professional work.
This has been a ramble, sorry.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The idea that minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage is an idea that is simply unacceptable. This is because there are simply too many temptations to use the idea that MW is for entry level jobs to make so many jobs MW jobs that it hurts working class people. It becomes a lazy excuse for bad management that hurts too many people.

 

[LordKiran]

Why was the minimum wage implemented to begin with? When you have a minimum wage period, the implicit stance you make is that we (The USA) have an interest in assuring wage equitability for people who work. The important thing is that WE decide what is and is not equitable.

 

[laughing dog]

In history, the first minimum wage was passed in New Zealand in 1894. In the USA, the first minimum wage was a state law in Massachusetts in 1912. The first federal minimum wage was passed in 1938 (source:https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/)

Assuming there was a single reason for the minimum wage, what difference does it make what it was? Especially since the USA it was instituted almost 80 years.

 

[LordKiran]

In history, the first minimum wage was passed in New Zealand in 1894. In the USA, the first minimum wage was a state law in Massachusetts in 1912. The first federal minimum wage was passed in 1938 (source:https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/)

Assuming there was a single reason for the minimum wage, what difference does it make what it was? Especially since the USA it was instituted almost 80 years.

Point being, you wouldn't pass a minimum wage at all unless you had an interest in assuring equability in what people are paid for their work.

 

[Bronzeage]

If minimum wage was never intended to be a living wage, why have any standard at all? What's the point?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Assuming there was a single reason for the minimum wage, what difference does it make what it was? Especially since the USA it was instituted almost 80 years.

The only time people are actively disinterested in original reasons for something is when they already know those original reasons but don't want that information to spread. In the case of minimum wage I can see why.

It has some pretty racist roots, as minorities were under bidding other wage earners. Also non-union employees were under bidding union employees. These two separate and related issues spurred minimum wage legislation. It was anti-black and anti-poor, like many of the causes embraced even today by the Democratic Party.

 

[southernhybrid]

A single person can no longer support him/herself on the 7.25/hr. minimum wage without a bit of help from government programs which help with food and housing. If children are involved, that usually means Medicaid or CHIP as well. This wasn't always the case. The minimum wage is way past due for being increased. Perhaps, it's not realistic to double it at once, but it certainly needs to be raised incrementally to the point where an individual can support him/herself.

Is it fair to have the government supplement employers by allowing them to pay people such a small amount of money that their employees end up being dependent on social programs supplied by government? Don't businesses already have tax advantages that help them maintain their businesses? Shouldn't they pay their employees enough money to keep them free from depending on government programs to help them survive?

I do part time contract work in an assisted living facility. The care provider staff make 8 dollars an hour, after they've been working there for awhile. Otherwise, raises are never given. I know a lot about how these poor women live. Most get help from government programs unless they are married to men who make a better wage, or living with their parents. Many are single with children and they struggle to survive. Perhaps if everyone interacted and knew many poor people, like I do, they would develop some understanding about how difficult it is to survive on the current minimum wage. And, the turnover where I work is tremendous. It seems to me if the wages were better, more workers would stay in the very difficult job of caring for older frail adults with dementia.

And please spare me the garbage that they shouldn't have had children. The kids are here and unless we vastly improve access to family planning and education, poor women will keep having more children than they can afford. Some of these poor women are in their forties and fifties, so apparently minimum wage jobs are not just for entry level young people.

 

[laughing dog]

Assuming there was a single reason for the minimum wage, what difference does it make what it was? Especially since the USA it was instituted almost 80 years.

The only time people are actively disinterested in original reasons for something is when they already know those original reasons but don't want that information to spread. In the case of minimum wage I can see why.

The rational for maintaining a rule or law can change when the situation changes.

For example, many racists embrace libertarianism because it gives them a philosophical foundation for allowing the private sector to engage in discrimination.

 

[Bomb#20]

If minimum wage was never intended to be a living wage, why have any standard at all? What's the point?

The point is to stop the scabs from crossing the virtual picket lines, so that the virtual union guys can get the monopoly price for labor without having to go to the effort of creating a real unskilled laborers' union and setting up real picket lines around every employer who wants to hire non-union labor.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The GOP simply hates the idea of a decent minimum wage. Meaning MW earners need to have support, such as food stamps et al, to get by. But the GOP is dead set on eliminating as much of this government assistance as possible. Maybe better unions is the answer, but the GOP is making it as hard as possible for unions to operate.

I think I see our problem here. An incompetent and dysfunctional political party.

 

[Bomb#20]

Is it fair to have the government supplement employers by allowing them to pay people such a small amount of money that their employees end up being dependent on social programs supplied by government? Don't businesses already have tax advantages that help them maintain their businesses? Shouldn't they pay their employees enough money to keep them free from depending on government programs to help them survive?

Is it fair to have the government supplement grocers by allowing them to trade people such a small amount of food that their customers end up being dependent on social programs supplied by government? Don't grocers already have tax advantages that help them maintain their businesses? Shouldn't they feed their customers enough money to keep them free from depending on government programs to help them survive?

So if you sell any food at all to a poor person, then you should be required to give him enough to live on regardless of how little he gives you in exchange. People who can't earn enough to buy enough food to live on should be supported at the expense of whichever grocers profit from their hunger by selling them some food. And if no grocer is willing to accept that deal then the poor people should just not eat. Otherwise the government is subsidizing grocers, and that wouldn't be fair.

If you think that's an unsound argument, can you point to any place where the analogy with your own argument breaks down?

 

[none]

can people get cheaper food from grocers that don't receive "supplements"?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The idea that minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage is an idea that is simply unacceptable. This is because there are simply too many temptations to use the idea that MW is for entry level jobs to make so many jobs MW jobs that it hurts working class people. It becomes a lazy excuse for bad management that hurts too many people.

Reality: about 1% of the American workforce works for minimum wage. That's consistent with it being an entry job.

My first job was minimum wage, also--an on-campus job

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why was the minimum wage implemented to begin with? When you have a minimum wage period, the implicit stance you make is that we (The USA) have an interest in assuring wage equitability for people who work. The important thing is that WE decide what is and is not equitable.

It was created to deny jobs to blacks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Is it fair to have the government supplement employers by allowing them to pay people such a small amount of money that their employees end up being dependent on social programs supplied by government? Don't businesses already have tax advantages that help them maintain their businesses? Shouldn't they pay their employees enough money to keep them free from depending on government programs to help them survive?

1) Most minimum wage workers aren't the primary breadwinner in their household.

2) They would exist and need money to live on whether the job existed or not. The company did not create the situation, they are not responsible for it.

 

[horhangi]

Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be living wage career jobs. Does anyone really think that you should be able to support a family working the drive through window at McDonalds? Some jobs are very low skill and really should be high turn over. These jobs are an entry to the workforce. These jobs are necessary for people to enter the workforce, for companies to staff high turn over positions. The positions should be high turn over, as no one should want to spend a career in a minimum wage job.

 

[LordKiran]

Why was the minimum wage implemented to begin with? When you have a minimum wage period, the implicit stance you make is that we (The USA) have an interest in assuring wage equitability for people who work. The important thing is that WE decide what is and is not equitable.

It was created to deny jobs to blacks.

Well?

Go on...? Surely there's a story here.

 

[Bomb#20]

can people get cheaper food from grocers that don't receive "supplements"?

Let's reason it out. "Supplements" here refers to the metaphysical contagiousness of subsidization that southernhybrid and so many others believe in, wherein when you subsidize person X and then person X uses his subsidy to trade with person Y, that allegedly means you're subsidizing person Y. So going by that premise, grocers that don't receive "supplements" would have to refer to grocers who never sell food to poor people on welfare. What grocer would reject someone as a customer just because he's on welfare? So it must be the grocer rather than the poor person who's getting rejected. I.e., the grocers who satisfy your criterion are specialty grocers who sell high-end gourmet items to the people who can afford them -- $90/lb Kobe beef or whatever. They reason they don't receive "supplements" is because poor people are too smart to blow their meager welfare checks on anything so extravagant. So no, as a rule people cannot get cheaper food from grocers that don't receive "supplements".

In the scenario from southernhybrid's argument, the analogous question would be:

Can people get cheaper dollars -- i.e., dollars they have to supply less of their labor in return for -- from employers that don't receive "supplements"?​

In southernhybridese, employers that don't receive "supplements" refers to employers who don't employ people on welfare. If a minimum wage earner currently on welfare could find cheaper dollars -- i.e., a job that pays enough for his labor that he could go off welfare -- he'd probably already have taken it. So no, as a rule people can't get cheaper dollars from employers that don't receive "supplements".

I expect southernhybridese-speakers will object that people can get cheaper dollars, and as evidence point out that many employers do in fact pay enough that their employees don't need welfare. But that doesn't prove those companies' employees are buying cheaper dollars with their labor. People are not interchangeable parts. It's an error to take for granted that the labor of one person making $15/hour is the same thing as the labor of a different person who hasn't been able to find a $15/hour job. To assume your 4-minute dollar is automatically cheaper than someone else's 6-minute dollar is exactly the same error as assuming a $4 chicken in Albuquerque is cheaper than a $6 chicken in Belize City.

 

[DBT]

The idea that minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage is an idea that is simply unacceptable. This is because there are simply too many temptations to use the idea that MW is for entry level jobs to make so many jobs MW jobs that it hurts working class people. It becomes a lazy excuse for bad management that hurts too many people.

Reality: about 1% of the American workforce works for minimum wage. That's consistent with it being an entry job.

My first job was minimum wage, also--an on-campus job

This doesn't paint a pretty picture of income distribution for a wealthy country.


''According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average household income was $73,298 in 2014, the latest year for which complete data is available. However, this doesn't tell the whole story. Depending on your family situation and where you live, average household income can vary dramatically''

Household Income (AGI) Percent of Households With Lower AGI

$2,000. 9%

$4,000 6.8%

$6,000 9.8%

$8,000 12.7%

$10,000 16.2%

$12,000 19.5%

$14,000 22.8%

$16,000 26%

$18,000 29.2%

$20,000 32.1%

$25,000 38.9%

$30,000 44.8%

$40,000 54.6%

$50,000 62.4%

$75,000 75.4%

$100,000 84%

$200,000 95.8%

$500,000 99.2%

$1,000,000 99.7%

$1,500,000 99.8%

$2,000,000 99.9%


https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/30/