Why do so many people support an increase to minimum wage?

1. 57

   El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years ago

   Why do so many people support an increase to minimum wage?
   
   I will be the first to tell you that we should help as many people as we can, within reason.  Minimum wage jobs are not meant for those with families.  Minimum wage jobs should be temporary and/or for college students.  Minimum wage jobs are not careers.  Economics 101 shows why minimum wage jobs pay so little.  If people want to make more money, they need to bring more value to society.  People cannot just demand more money.  Well, they can, but not without consequences.  Your thoughts?

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   punkraliaposted 8 years ago

   Minimum wage jobs are very crucial to an economy to strive..with the increase in industrialization and competition among them, getting your manufacturing cost to a bare minimum is the most debatable factor. Yeah, technology is there to do most of the work through machines but its not that much evolved to completely replace human intelligence. Its like two flip sides of the same coin.

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Increases in minimum wages drive companies to develop technology that can replace humans. We have seen this at big chain stores through the use of self check out machines.

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      ptosisposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I think that's what was said about child labor and the 17 hour work day about a hundred years ago, or Slavery previously to that. Survived freedom and children going to school. I think we can survive this.

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      ptosis, people will survive. The problem is that quality of life will not improve. People will work less hours, forcing many to share housing, making life uncomfortable.

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3. 71

   dashingscorpioposted 8 years ago

   
   
   "Minimum wage jobs should be temporary and/or for college students. Minimum wage jobs are not careers." - Very true!
   However once called "stepping stone jobs" in the U.S. have become regular forms of employment due to free trade deals and corporations exporting huge segments middleclass manufacturing jobs.
   Most adults did not choose a minimum wage job for a career. They fell into it by necessity. Until the labor market adjusts by coming up with jobs that can't be outsourced or exported there will be pressure to raise the minimum wage.
   One of the reasons why so many folks are against illegal immigration is because they help to suppress hourly wages.
   Less people available to work means higher salaries.
   When I was a child most neighborhoods had "paperboys" who delivered their newspapers. Today people either don't subscribe to a newspaper and for those who do they are delivered by adults driving vans or trucks.
   Essentially a lot of manufacturing/assembly jobs have been outsourced and our economy has not adequately replaced those jobs with anything else. Even telemarketing jobs are outsourced.
   Nevertheless housing, products, and overall cost of living rise.
   Suddenly someone who was making $60-$70k or more a year in a steel mill that closed down might now find them self working as a courier deliver, working in fast food restaurant, or a tourist service job.
   At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion ($39.82 billion today). Its employment was greatest in 1943 when it had more than (340,000 employees); by 2000, however, it employed 52,500.
   That's just one example!
   The majority of people in minimum wage jobs didn't purchase their homes, cars, or had their children on that salary.
   They {had} higher paying jobs!
   Corporations have increased their profits by moving their plants to other countries where labor is much cheaper and tax rates are lower.
   Thus stock prices have gone up because profits go up.
   However large segments of the population which were in the "middleclass" are now in service sector jobs. Various politicians have promised over the years to come up with industries or manufactured products which cannot be outsourced. They've also promised to come up with incentives to get corporations to invest in the U.S. by continuing to hire employees here...etc
   The era I grew up in no longer exists. The "new normal" for a lot of folks is making $10 or less per hour or pursuing a job with Uber.

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Very good comments.  I hadn't viewed it that way.  At the same time, artificial increases in wages that are not driven by economic forces are always dangerous.  The housing crisis was a result of artificial home values.

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      ptosisposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Wrong the housing bubble was  because Banks have treated our housing market like a Ponzi scheme.  lenders’ consistently reckless and predatory behavior and not the  irresponsible homeowners who borrowed beyond their means was the root cause.

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      Annsaloposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      As someone who has been in real estate for the last 12 years, ptosis is right. We didn't over estimate values, banks loaned to ppl with poor credit, no job, no income verification, loaned to anyone which caused the housing crisis! Great answer dash!

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      ptosis & annsalo, people borrowed too much.  Banks had a surplus of money to lend. All of that money allowed people to offer more for homes which resulted in inflated home values.

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      Annsaloposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Banks didn't have a surplus, the majority of loans that caused the problem were government backed loans. I was selling homes during it. Home prices in our state were about the same as now. They knew government would bail them out!

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Annsalo, I couldn't help notice that your hubs focus on being broke. There is a book in the Bible that says, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." Life becomes what one focuses on. Sorry. I felt compelled to share.

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      Annsaloposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Please don't assume to know anything about me based on those articles. They are meant to help those in a position I have lived in and overcome, thankfully! Some of us actually like being able to help others.

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4. 73

   ptosisposted 8 years ago

   
   
   I lived in Honolulu, where a lot of people have 2 jobs of 29 hours each because ACA is based on the Hawaiian model - nobody wants to hire you full time & get stuck with providing worker's health insurance. So everybody hires part time, the workers work 2 PT jobs plus the time to take to get from one job to the other on the bus system and that's probably why Honolulu is the meth capital of the USA because people work very long hours. A long time use of meth with ruin a human for life to the point of being to stupid too work at all.
   
   Full-time workers should not be so poor that they are qualified for food stamps -means that the US taxpayers are giving corporate welfare to big business by making wages artificially low by providing a ground deck of services to full-time workers which perpetuates the exploitation of humans.
   
   Nations thrive when they develop “inclusive” political and economic institutions, and they fail when those institutions become “extractive” and concentrate power and opportunity in the hands of only a few.
   
   
   From: http://www.livingwageaction.org/resources_faq.htm
   
   The lowest income bracket has been getting steadily poorer and the real value of the minimum wage has steadily declined since 1968. All this has been occurring despite increasing productivity in US workplaces. Low wage workers live in extreme poverty, and cannot afford decent housing, nutritional intake, health care or basic necessities for them or their families. This is not a question of abstract market theory; this is about real people who work two and three jobs just to scrape by. Working families should not live in poverty.
   
   Were workers able to maintain a decent standard of living on the wages of one job (in other words, if they were to make a living wage) not only could time be made for family members, but, were they inclined, workers would have time for technical, linguistic or academic coursework, have time to participate in political campaigns or union activities, or devote time to either improving their workplace or looking for a different job.

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      ptosis, low wage workers should not be having families. People do not want to take responsibility for themselves.  They want the government to take responsibility for them. "Increase minimum wage" they say.

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      ptosisposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      OK  so I had a job, a family and then lost the job, so I should kill my kids or sell them?  Is that what you are saying ? El Shaddai - what kind of family did you grow up in?

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      ptosis,
      
      Why not get the same kind of job you had before, assuming you were making a decent wage. I grew up in a poor family. I learned from the mistakes of my parents.

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   Annsaloposted 8 years ago

   The problem with minimum wage is that while it use to be just for kids and uneducated that is not the case anymore. You know that saying of how any job is better than no job? Well many people are stuck taking something minimum wage just to support their families.
   I live in the south. The towns here use to be supported by the mills. Now all the mills are closed. So if you want work your options are limited. Not everyone can drive an hour to the nearest big city for work. So they are stuck taking what they can so they can.
   The average age of someone getting minimum wage is 35. 88% of minimum wage workers are adults. 28% have children they are supporting. 44% are college educated.
   Even those not getting minimum wage need a pay increase. In my area the going rate for manufacturing with 5 years experience is $9 an hour. That is not enough for someone with 5 years under their belt!
   Companies no longer pay a living wage.
   My husband is college educated with 17 years experience and we are still lower middle class (poor after taxes and health insurance). Why? Because the average pay for blue collar careers in our area is BELOW $15 an hour even with years of experience.
   Times change, and pay needs to be adjusted for those changes.

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Where did you get those statistics?

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      Annsaloposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Google, there are thousands of non biased pages you can read these stats on. However if it is a site ran by conservatives it seems to manipulate those stats.

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      ptosisposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      in conjunction with helping people get off of food stamps, raising the minimum wage would save the government $46 billion over 10 years in spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as people earn enough  to get off gov't dole

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   4. 57

      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      ptosis, what do you think employers will do when the minimum wage increases? They will cut people's hours. Fast food restaurants cannot handle the burden of the increased labor expense. Less people will have to do more.

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6. 0

   LoliHeyposted 8 years ago

   I think it is important because the cost of living goes up.  And because of inflation.  Minimum wage jobs end up being career jobs for some people.  Someone has to make my french fries.

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   1. 57

      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      LOL!! You are funny. The reality is that people who earn minimum wage should not be having families. People have to learn to live within their means and not rely on the government for help.

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      Annsaloposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Some people HAD better jobs, they lost them in the crisis and now are stuck with what they can get.

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      ptosisposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      the minimum wage in 1968 was about $9.40 in today's dollars: "So that means that today, America's lowest paid workers are being paid about 23 percent less than they were 45 years ago."

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      Link10103posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I've gotten a raise twice and I'm still about 60 cents short of that >.>

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Annsalo, they should find a similar job to the one they lost. ptosis, where did you get that statistic? Link10103, the key is to get a job that is higher in demand.

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      Annsaloposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      If it were that easy don't you think they would? No one WANTS to make $7.25 especially when they are over qualified.

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   Link10103posted 8 years ago

   You might have a point if the minimum wage was enough to do that thing called living.
   
   When people have multiple jobs and still can't afford to take care of themselves or their family, it's not because they haven't brought value to society. Sounds alot like the "pull yourself up by your Bootstrap's" mentality that victim blames people for getting shafted by an already f'ed system.

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      El Shaddai 2016posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Can't tell if you are for or against an increase in minimum wage with this post. Please clarify.

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      Link10103posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      That only fuels my assumption that you're either painfully oblivious to reality or that you're a troll.
      
      It would be nice if I was wrong on both counts.

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   tamarawilhiteposted 8 years ago

   Wages for those in the bottom 25% of society have seen wages stagnate due to international competition for manufacturing jobs and local competition for work with illegal immigrants - while cost of living has gone up due to slow inflation because of government policies.
   So they want more money for their time - but unfortunately, competition for their labor is keeping wages down.
   You can't justify raising the minimum wage when open trade policies let China flood the US with cheaper goods than it would cost to make it here and illegal aliens employment goes up if Americans get paid more per hour.

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