tennyson wrote:

The Man wrote:

tennyson wrote:

Don't know, but one thing for sure the current minimum wage is not a living wage. 

My point, however, I believe goes way beyond minimum wage in addressing actual differences in skill levels and whether people should be rewarded equally for different levels of skills ( I am I know only assuming that is exactly what happened in the case posted here. Obviously I have no way of knowing) 





 

 
I don't even know what a living wage is. I imagine a living wage varies wildly from a single person, no kids, living with their parents to a single person with 4 kids and a mortgage or rent. No one has ever been able to define 'living wage'.

But to your point, in the McDonald's example, someone with years of experience working there would most likely have a higher skill level than a new hire off the street.

Not so much. That is why it is so easy to train a new worker if they have any basic skills. As they say it is not rocket science. Unless you want to get into management and progress from there the skill level is pretty static once you get through basic training. Considering the turnover in most facilities like this the skill set has to be pretty basic right from the get go. 



 

 
Exactly, and that's a big reason why that job doesn't pay more.  Anyone can do it.  To artificially jack up the pay for a job like that is nonsense.  When restaurants start having trouble getting people to do that job, that is when the pay should, and would go up.

Last edited by The Man (4/14/2015 9:03 pm)

tennyson wrote:

You seem to have reversed position from your earlier post, but never mind that. 

Do you believe that the Minimum Wage has any purpose (or ever did) and if so why or why not. 

If you DO believe it to have a purpose, do you believe it is living up to that now ? 


 

 
In what way did I reverse my position?

Yes, it serves a purpose.  It gives teenagers an entry into the workforce.  An entry level to build upon.  And yes, it still does that, just like always.

tennyson wrote:

The Man wrote:

tennyson wrote:

You seem to have reversed position from your earlier post, but never mind that. 

Do you believe that the Minimum Wage has any purpose (or ever did) and if so why or why not. 

If you DO believe it to have a purpose, do you believe it is living up to that now ? 


 

In what way did I reverse my position?

Yes, it serves a purpose. It gives teenagers an entry into the workforce. An entry level to build upon. And yes, it still does that, just like always.

 Historically that certainly was not the purpose and IMHO the purpose should NOT just to be to lure teenagers into the workforce. 

 

 
I've been in the workforce for 21 years, have a college degree, and make $43,000 a year.  Are you saying that minimum wage should pay close to that? If so, I can honestly say that I would be extremely disgruntled if I didn't receive an equivalent raise in pay.

The Man wrote:

tennyson wrote:

The Man wrote:

In what way did I reverse my position?

Yes, it serves a purpose. It gives teenagers an entry into the workforce. An entry level to build upon. And yes, it still does that, just like always.

 Historically that certainly was not the purpose and IMHO the purpose should NOT just to be to lure teenagers into the workforce. 

 

 
I've been in the workforce for 21 years, have a college degree, and make $43,000 a year. Are you saying that minimum wage should pay close to that? If so, I can honestly say that I would be extremely disgruntled if I didn't receive an equivalent raise in pay.

NOWHERE have I ever implied that. The last raise to the minimum wage was in 2009. Many have been trying to get it raised to about $11/hour without success (check out any attemped action on minimum wage and see you opposed it or favored it for a political flavor) . That would bring a minimum wage job to about 22,800 per year IF they worked 40 hours per week and got paid for 52 weeks. 

Last stats that I saw (2011) showed that almost 50% of the people making minimum wage were OVER the age of 25. 

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011tbls.htm



 

My two cents here:

If you were to examine minimum wage increases in the past since the whole thing was implemented, I think you will find that minimum wage increases did not send the economy down the tube, but instead had just the opposite effect.

We may have a philosophical difference here in that I believe you build an economy from the bottom up, not from the top down.  The top-down thing has been in place since the 80's beginning with that "Trickle Down" approach.  Personally, I think it blows, but no administration or congress has honestly assessed the experiment, and I'm including every president and congress beginning with Reagan to the present.

Something else to consider is that increases in minimum wages had a ripple effect that worked its way upward that benefited those being paid well above the wage minimum.  Secondly, raising minimum wage removes many of those people out of the poverty level, and thus reducing their need for taxpayer funded public assistance and/or welfare.

And, another thing .............  people on the bottom few rungs of the socio-economic ladder will buy more stuff if they could afford to.  These are not people that invest piles of money in the stock market, but instead recycle money back into the economy rather quickly, thus increasing the demand for more stuff which in turn requires greater production from a bigger workforce.  Once again, I take issue with those who buy into the supply-side economic approach, and instead support a demand-side approach to the economy.

Sorry for the mini-ramble, but sometimes various ideas and positions on certain issues enter my dome simultaneously.