Do you support a Minimum Wage Increase?

[Sapphire Blue]

Poll question: Do you support a Minimum Wage Increase?

If 'yes', please ***** Call the Senate to Raise the Minimum Wage! ***** 1-800-459-1887 ***** (VOTING MONDAY) *****: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3154340


~~~~~ If 'no', perhaps you should work at the wage rate of $5.15/hr that you support! ~~~~~


Sapphire Blue
Resident Du Fanatic Beggar

:hug: :loveya: :grouphug: :loveya: :hug:

[AndyA]

1. ABSOLUTELY - and it's long, long overdue!

America's working men and women need a break. Everything has been against them for years. It's time we gave them the ability to earn a living, support a family, and have a say in the direction our country heads.

[ThomCat]

2. Wow, there's already one freeper voting in the poll.

That was quick.

[Sapphire Blue]

3. I edited the OP in that poster's honor.

[galadrium]

4. Maybe there should be a difference between....

Maybe there should be a difference between 16 year-old kids in high school working for beer money, and people actually trying to support a family on minimum wage... just something to think about.

[ThomCat]

7. Every kid I know who works

is paying for his own clothes, and saving for college, and many of them contribute to the family budget to help the family get by. There is no reason why any of them "deserve" to earn less money for the same jobs than anyone else.

Where are these kids who only buy beer?

[galadrium]

10. I knew tons of them

I went to high school in suburbia with tons of them, probably most of the people that went to my high school were just suburban rich kids that didn't have to worry about paying for college, or buying anything except non-essentials... like beer.

[cynatnite]

14. Why should there be a difference?

Why does how they spend their money mean they should get paid less?

[galadrium]

16. Thats not my issue.

16-year old kids are mostly unskilled workers, with no work experience. Why should they get paid on the same par as someone who is 50-years old and has worked their entire life?

[Greyhound]

18. They shouldn't, the 50 year old shouldn't be earning the minimum wage. n/t

[galadrium]

20. I agree.

My point is, that when you try to impose fairness with regard to wages, you make something else unfair and are basically saying that work experience and a lifetime of working is worth nothing.

What should 50-year olds be earning?

You just proved my point, 16-year olds should't make as much as 50-year olds. But the reason is that a 50-year old should have collected some skills that give him the ability to make more.

[hfojvt]

56. people have lots of skills

but often, they cannot find jobs or employers that want to utilize those skills. Thus I, a former computer programmer with an MA (in economics, and a BA in math) am working as a janitor. I can just see an HR person looking at my resume. "Hmmm, BA in math, MA in economics, owned his own business. Finally, we have somebody who can empty the trash." So I am working as a temp, basically emptying trash for Phillip Morris, a huge company. Working on a million dollar Bosch line too, a line which was once shut down for an hour before I fixed the problem. Three years I was there as a temp and four times I applied for a job, and they simply had no interest in utilizing my degrees. They did, however, hire a temp from another shift who had sucked up to somebody who was friends with the HR director, but they fired him when a background check discovered that he lied about having his GED.
So there are many ways a 50 year old could be vying for a low-paying unskilled job just because that is all that is available.

[cynatnite]

65. If they do the same job, they should get same wages n/t

[ThomCat]

15. Don't make blanket rules that punish all teens

because of your perception of some of the kids near you.

[cynatnite]

13. Excellent point...

my teenage daughter works. Her income has helped us over some humps plus she buys her own clothes and pays for majority of her school expenses.

There is no reason any teen is less entitled than anyone else because of how they spend their money.

[Greyhound]

17. If we allow a split like that all that will accomplish is that 16 year old kids will

be in great demand. The bottom line that we have to deal with is that, through the manipulation of laws and regulations, we have totally skewed the relative value of everything to conform with the profit schemes of well connected businesses and it's starting to unravel.

For example, (some) food is too cheap and consumer crap is horrendously overpriced.

[PA Democrat]

19. Gee, I worked at the age of 16, and used the money to pay for

my college education. And that was more than 20 years ago. College tuition costs have far outpaced inflation, let alone the minimum wage (in real dollars).

[denverbill]

21. Aside from the '16 year old' and 'beer money' remark, why..

do you think it's ok to pay 2 people different amounts for doing the same job? Who in their right mind would hire a 45 year old to bag groceries if he had to pay him twice as much as a 16 year old?

Everyone, children included, deserves a decent rate of pay for their work. When I was in high school, the going rate was something like $2.30/hour. Even if inflation only averaged 3% over that time (which is extremely unlikely given the double digit inflation rate in the late 70's-early 80's) the minimum wage would be $5.58/hour. Kids that want to work deserve to earn enough to pay for gas, clothes, movies, and whatever the heck else they want to spend it on (or save it for college), just the same as I did when I was a kid. If you're old enough to work, you're old enough to earn adult money.

[galadrium]

25. No, I don't think age should have anything to do with how much someone gets paid

But if you think people who are older should make more money, as some people here have indicated, then its only fair that the older you are the more you should make.

The whole idea of a minimum wage job is insulting to workers anyway, it is basically like an employer saying "if I could pay you less, I would." Who here would want to take a job based on that?

[denverbill]

35. Well, the sad fact is, if employers could pay less, they WOULD.

That fact has been proven time and time again since time immemorial. From the coal mine owners of the 1800's who would routinely cut their worker's pay and bring in cheap, immigrant labor to replace any who balked at a pay cut, to the unscrupulous contractors who hire illegal migrant workers today to the Southern plantation owners in dear old Dixie.

Yes, it's sad that we have to pass a law to force people to do the decent, honorable, and Christian thing, but until such a time as all men are good and decent, we will unfortunately have to pass laws to require them to be so. We've had to pass laws to forbid men from beating their wives, sexually harassing their employees, and selling their children into slavery. It's hardly surprising that it takes passing a law to force them to give their employees a half-way decent salary.


"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual price."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

[galadrium]

51. Then why don't they?

Raising the minimum only effects people who are making below $7.50, or whatever they are going to raise it to. If your logic is correct then all laborers would make exactly minimum wage. Why aren't all those middle class people making minimum wage?

[denverbill]

69. If there was no such thing as education or ability, they would be.

But obviously, Henry Ford can't hire 3 year olds or uneducated illegal immigrants to design engines. And nobody in their right mind would spend $50,000 on a college education if engineers were paid minimum wage. Similar circumstances apply in other situations. A bar owner could pay all of his waitresses minimum wage, but he might have several that attract customers like flies and do a really great job. Unless he's stupid, of course he will pay his better workers more money. And a fast food business owner might be willing to pay more in order to keep someone who is reliable, to save him the expense and hassle of constantly retraining a new cook.

We are not talking about all jobs or all people. We are talking about jobs which require little education or experience, and which generally have far more qualified applicants than available jobs. Grocery clerks, busboys, dishwashers, housekeepers, landscapers, farm workers, janitors, etc. In former times, longshoremen, miners, factory workers, and teamsters would have also made the list, but thanks to unions, people can now earn good livings in those occupations.

And raising the minimum wage affects more than just those people making minimum wage. If one of the 'good' waitresses above is making $7.50/hr, and the minimum wage is increased to $7.50, if she doesn't like her working conditions, she suddenly has dozens of new, equal paying jobs she could take. So most employers who employees earn close to minimum wage will also 'voluntarily' increase the wages of their other hourly staff who earn more than the minimum to retain people they want to keep.

And if abolishing the minimum wage is a good idea, name a country which you would want to live in that doesn't have a minimum wage? I'd love to see a successful example of this libertarian utopia.

[philosophie_en_rose]

23. Same wage for same work.

Families with children can be assisted with tax breaks and other opportunities. Taking from teens would NEVER mean that money would go to subsidize families. It would just go to the business.

[BushOut06]

27. I wholeheartedly agree - minimum wage should also be different for men and women

Minimum wage for men should be $12.00/hr, and $6.75 for women. Because we all know that women just use the money to buy bon-bons and Weekly World News magazines.

:sarcasm:

[sandnsea]

33. They're working for college money

and some others are working for clothes and high school expenses their parents can't afford. Some are actually working to help their single moms and pay for younger kids' clothes, school supplies, etc. Only kids who HAVE to work, do. Upper income families don't allow their kids to work for 'beer money'.

[0rganism]

36. If a high-school kid is "working for beer money" the problem isn't the min. wage

"just something to think about", eh?

I know when I worked at 16, it wasn't for beer money. Maybe it wasn't to support a family, but it wasn't for beer either. You going to tell me my wage should have been less for that?

There are a lot of working adults who spend money on beer that could be spent more productively on other causes. How about instead of singling out people by age, you propose doing it by expense: if they're buying beer, in addition to the existing sin taxes, you can dock their paychecks accordingly -- but only for minimum wage earners. Think that'd fly? :silly:

[iverglas]

38. and of course what then happens

is that employers hire 16-year-old-kids in high school working for beer money INSTEAD OF hiring adults who have no other way of supporting themselves and their families.

No two-tier class of employees ever works. My little brother tried to tell his fellow unionized grocery store cashiers in Montreal this years and years ago: if the union agreed to allow the corporation to hire part-timers at lower wages than the full-timers, how many full-timers did they really think were going to be left same time next year? (I know, old news now, but in the 70s this was new news.)

It has been demonstrated over and over again. The race to the bottom gets you nowhere except the bottom, or very close to it.

The way to ensure that there are jobs with decent wages is to require that there be decent wages for jobs. There is then less incentive for unskilled, below poverty line jobs to be created, and more incentive to create jobs for which higher wages are a good use of money. Sweden is historically the classic example of this -- and the US, with its pool of unskilled, low-wage, barely employed workers, the cautionary tale against believing it.


(I didn't vote in the poll because I have no dog in the US domestic policy race on this point ... except of course that Canada has lost a load of jobs to low-wage states in the US since free trade started ...)

[Bridget Burke]

60. So let the 16 year olds mow lawns.

Or clean snow off sidewalks.

Or babysit.

Or sell pot to buy their beer--hey, you're the one advocating law-breaking!

[Stand and Fight]

5. Absolute support from me for an increase!

It's about dammed time. It's a shame that we have a term called "working poor" in this country. It's a national shame.

[EFerrari]

6. When my kids were little, both their parents worked minimum wage

jobs. I don't know how we did it then and I'm sure we couldn't do the same today.

K&R

[OhioChick]

8. I Fully Support an Increase. n/t

[Swamp Rat]

9. Yes, to $20.00/hr+ and a 4 day work week, 2 months paid vacation,

free health insurance w/100% coverage, and a 1,000% decrease in CEO salaries.

I also support a 6 day work week for all politicians, a 75% reduction in salary, and NO FREEBIES!

[OhioChick]

12. 100% in Agreement!

:toast:

[scrinmaster]

72. That is the dumbest thing I've heard all day.

You're saying that someone who's been a cop or a teacher for a couple years should earn as much as a burger flipper at McDonalds?

If politicians salaries were reduced, they would still need money to live on, making it nearly impossible for anyone who wasn't rich before to run. So they should use their own money to send out mailings? Is that what you want? Do you want it so that someone who isn't extremely wealthy to be able to afford to sit in office? And the less time the politicians are at work, the less time they have to screw things up for the rest of us.

[scrinmaster]

73. That is the dumbest thing I've heard all day.

You're saying that someone who's been a cop or a teacher for a couple years should earn as much as a burger flipper at McDonalds?

If politicians salaries were reduced, they would still need money to live on, making it nearly impossible for anyone who wasn't rich before to run. So they should use their own money to send out mailings? Is that what you want? Do you want it so that someone who isn't extremely wealthy to be able to afford to sit in office? And the less time the politicians are at work, the less time they have to screw things up for the rest of us.

[Swamp Rat]

75. I want to talk to progressive liberals.

Not inbred Bushler sycophants.

[MemphisTiger]

11. This is long over due...

repubs complain about those on welfare but you can make more money on welfare than working a min wage job. Perhaps if it was more attractive to work min wage then those on welfare would be lower thus leading to more tax revenue and more money to start the invasion of another country, you would think repubs would love a min wage increase if you think about it...

[philosophie_en_rose]

22. Hell yes!

Washington State is proof that a higher minimum wage does NOT hurt the economy.

No one can live on 5.15 an hour.

[galadrium]

24. So how many here are going to get a pay raise as a result of this?

[ThomCat]

40. Geez, you're just searching for reasons to shoot down

this minimum wage increase. What is the problem?

[galadrium]

45. I dont really care if it passes or not...

The increase won't even effect that many people because most places, even places that employ unskilled workers pay more than minimum wage. The reason they do this is because the market is demanding a higher price for labor. Hell, even McDonalds pays $8.00 per hour.

This is feel good legislation that wont end up helping many people. But if it keeps people voting Democratic then I don't have a problem with it.

[ThomCat]

47. Most of my friends in Buffalo are making barely above minimum.

If this increase pushes up low wages even a little bit then it affects them.

In the town I grew up in, almost all jobs were minimum wage, or only slightly higher.

I don't know where you live, but in a lot of places this will affect almost everyone.

[galadrium]

50. I live in southeastern Ohio...

I know that the fast food places around here pay at least $8 per hour, which is far above minimum wage.

As a business owner, I know that if you have to pay people more than their utility as workers, you either lay them off and downsize... or you outsource the work (if you can). Successful efficient businesses create jobs and save consumers money.

I'm all for everyone making a good living, but making minimum wage should inspire people to get educated and get some other skills that are worth more than the minimum.

[ThomCat]

52. Skilled people end up leaving depressed locations

because even high skilled people get minimum wage when there are a lot of people and few jobs. I personally know a fair number of people with Masters Degrees who earn near minimum wage because that's all that's available.

One of the big characterists of the economy in the past 7 years is that a lot of high skilled people have lost jobs and had to go to work in much lower paying low-skilled jobs. A vast number of people are underemployed and underutilized.

It's our business owners and the people who direct the economy who made the economy what it is, not the workers. Blaming the people at the bottom for the fall-out that the people at the top caused is a total cop-out. You might not have the ability to influence the economy, but don't participate in blaming the victims.

[galadrium]

55. Its sad that educated and skilled people don't make huge money...

But the fact is that if skilled people end up working in places where they make less than they think they should, they are in the wrong profession. The people who got masters degrees obviously got degrees in something that there isn't much demand for. That sucks and I feel bad for them.

This isn't blaming the victim, this is economics. Its the same reason doctors make more than people who dig ditches. In a moral sense those people are both equal, but not everyone can be a doctor and that skill is in higher demand than someone who digs ditches. That is the reason doctors get paid more.

You can't repeal the laws of supply and demand no matter how good it feels. Trying to legislate economic fairness only creates other problems.

[ThomCat]

62. HA!

Nice generalizations.

Look at an office where the sales people make far more money than the people in the office who deliver the services. Certain skill-sets are disproportionately valued while others are de-valued. It has nothing to do with being in the wrong industry. Even within any one industry people will be segregated and certain people will be paid less. Take a look at who gets paid more, and try to figure out why.

Don't blame economics. That's a cop-out. Economics is the measurement and analysis of what's happening, not the cause. The cause is concentration of power, influence and weath. The cause is prejudices and greed.

There is a lot more to economics than just supply and demand, but people who know very little about anything always quote the one thing they know.

[TahitiNut]

57. Flat wrong! It will affect 14.9 MILLION workers!

Who are minimum wage workers?
An estimated 14.9 million workers (11% of the workforce) would benefit from an increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 by 2008. Of these workers, 6.6 million would be directly affected and 8.3 million would indirectly receive raises due to the spillover effect of a minimum wage increase. Of the total affected workers, 80% are adults and 59% are women. Over half (54%) work full time and another third (30%) work between 20 and 34 hours per week. More than one-quarter (26%) of the workers who would benefit from an increase to $7.25 are parents of children under age 18, including 1,395,000 single parents. The average minimum wage worker brings home over half (58%) of his or her family's weekly earnings.
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/issueguides_minwage_minwagefaq

It's not what people don't know that's the problem, it's what they think they know that's just flat fucking WRONG!
:grr:

[last_texas_dem]

61. I may

I am starting graduate school and am looking for part-time work. This minimum wage increase could end up making a difference for me, depending on what sort of job I can find.

You note that where you live that most jobs already pay above what the possible minimum wage increase will pay. But consider: there are still many parts of the country where this is not the case. I come from southeast Texas where I worked jobs that paid $5.30 an hour and $5.45 an hour for a good portion of the time that I was in college. I worked with, then, and know people now for whom this minimum wage increase will make a significant difference. For many parts of the south and in rural areas all over the country this minimum wage increase will not be meaningless legislation at all.

Besides, we're Democrats, not Republicans. There are many reasons, beyond whether it will put money directly into our own pockets, to consider in deciding whether or not to support a piece of legislation.

[Bjornsdotter]

26. I love

...your reminders.

Keep 'em coming...and I made my calls.

Cheer :toast:

[Sapphire Blue]

29. Thank you, Bjornsdotter!

:hug:

[FujiZ1]

28. With stipulations.

I'm a server. It's completely bullshit that I'm going to make 7.50 an hour plus tips. My place of employment will cut staff as a result. I support an increase of the minimum wage to 10.00 an hour, but with restrictions on tipped employees.

[galadrium]

30. You are right

If you raise the minimum wage too high, unemployment will go up because businesses aren't going to just accept making less money, or not being profitable.

[FujiZ1]

31. Don't get me wrong.

I want to see the unhappy people at McDonalds make 10.00 an hour. It would make them happier, and if I ever decided to go there, I would get to see it. Prices would go up, and the poor people that live off that shit would finally start to look elsewhere.

[galadrium]

46. If wages go up, the prices for things go up as well... so where is the gain?

[ThomCat]

49. Funny, but no economic data that I've ever seens

shows any corelation between the increase of the minimum wage and price increases. There are so many other costs and factors that have much greater impact on prices. The price of oil has more impact. The rate of inflation has far, far more impact.

The last time I saw an article by an economist looking at this, I believe the estimate was that prices would increase by less than 1%. If the price of a big mac goes up $0.01 I don't think McDonalds is going to get hit very hard.

[galadrium]

53. But you can see a correlation between wages and prices?

If the minimum wage was raised to $20 per hour like someone in this thread suggested, how much would your Big Mac cost then? If the cost of production increases, a business has to raise the price to make a profit.

Everyone wants to get paid a lot and have cheap goods at the same time. But legislating economic fairness isn't the way to do it.

[ThomCat]

54. You seem to be assuming a 1:1 relationship.

Wages for minimum wage employess are a very small part of the costs that determine the prices of products. If you're paying your employees minimum wage it's a good bet that your real estate costs, corporate insurance, shipping, and vendor costs are much more significant.

So raise wages to $20 per hour. Maybe your costs will go up 20%. Maybe. But how much more of your product are your own employees going to be able to buy? Henry Ford proved that paying your employees well builds a loyal market for your product.

[galadrium]

59. I think it varies with different products...

I don't assume a 1:1 relationship, although I am sure that very labor intensive manufactured products have close to this correlation.

In fact in many industries labor is one of the biggest, if not the biggest cost, especially in the service industry.

The Henry Ford example does show that paying good wages builds product loyalty. But paying relatively high wages also allows an employer to be highly selective of his employees. You can get higher quality workers, ones who show up on time and put forth good effort. That was Ford's plan and it worked. The fact that he paid more than the current going rate for labor gave him advantages that people who pay minimum wage don't get. Of course, there wasn't even a minimum wage when Ford began. This shows why we don't need a minimum wage.

[ThomCat]

66. Even in industries where labor appears to be the biggest

cost, that's often not the case. They lump everyone's wages into that one category and say "see, labor is huge!" But how much of that is executive pay? How much goes to upper managment who get disproportionate pay and benefits?

Often, very little of that category goes to the actual people with the lowest wages. But those people at the bottom keep getting blamed for the entire budget line.

In the service industry I'll bet you find that sales compensation is a huge part of the labor budget. So why are the people on the back end getting all the pressure to work for less?

My largest client is now entirely outsourcing entire departments to a temp agency. Those people earn peanuts. I know how much my client pays for those people and the temp agency makes a killing, even taking into account necessary overhead. So even here, the actual cost of labor is not the largest part of what my client pays. It's profit and overhead for the agency.

The idea that labor for the low wage people is such a huge expense is largely a myth that people are unwilling to examine. The low wage people are easy to blame.

[sandnsea]

34. You've been LIED TO

Oregon pays their servers minimum wage. It's $7.80 an hour now. Not one restaurant has closed down, no servers have lost their jobs. In most states, restaurants make their money off of alcohol sales anyway. Just another big fat lie brought to you by your big fat Republican boss.

[ThomCat]

42. I might (maybe) support that if everyone who is supposed to

get tips really does, but a lot of places know their employees are going to get piss-poor tips and yet expect them to live on tips anyway.

I don't see why anyone, even if they get tips, should get less than the minimum though. If they get the minimum, plus good tips, then they earn a better than minimum income. What's wrong with that?

[last_texas_dem]

64. I'm not sure that this will be the case in many places

I know several people who are waiters here in Texas who only make something like $2.50 an hour and depend on the tips to compensate for the restaurant not paying minimum wage. Is it common for restaurants and other businesses where tips are generally expected to be given to employees to be required to pay minimum wage? Perhaps it's determined on a state-by-state basis.

[Tyo]

32. Economic suicide

Are you kidding me? Don't people remember what's happened when we've raised the minimum in the past?

Thousands of small-business owners thrown into bankruptcy. Gangs of newly unemployed kids raging through malls smashing the windows of now empty stores and fast-food joints. Supermarket prices skyrocketing, toilet paper shortages, roses going unpruned and grass unmowed as people cut their landscapers back to every other week.

CEO salaries being cut down to 30 times the wage of the average worker rather than 260... Ooops, wait. Ignore that one! I don't know how that got in there. What's wrong with this friggin keyboard? WTF this never happens on Hannity's BB!

[IndyOp]

44. Okay - you had me going there for a second...

But only until the first sentence of the second paragraph. ;-)

:hi:

[ThomCat]

48. HA!

You're good. :7

[cboy4]

37. People are voting "no!"

:spray: :rofl:

[Sapphire Blue]

39. Seems to be some backwash here.

[ThomCat]

43. That is truly amazing.

I hope every one of them ends up living in a town where almost every job earns minimum wage and all you can aspire to is a manager job that pays at most twice that. Let's see if they still feel the same way then.

[SeattleGirl]

41. It absolutely should be increased.

It's already just shy of $8.00 an hour here in Oregon. To have to work for $5.15 an hour is absolutely atrocious.

[leftofthedial]

58. yes. AND I support the implementation of a maximum income too

that is indexed to the minimum wage.

[KarenS]

68. Excellent!! I like the "maximum wage" idea!! n/t

[Demosthenes Locke]

63. YEAH!

Of course i do. What do think i am, stupid? The only peopel who don't want a minimum wage hike are the ones who are too stingy to pay more money out of their already bulging pockets.

[newyawker99]

71. Hi Demosthenes Locke!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Nicole]

67. Of course! n/t

[bigwillq]

70. Yes

but I also think there should be across the board increases.
Mandatory ones.

I haven't gotten a raise in three years.

[bobbolink]

74. As has been suggested before, I think ALL CONGRESS should receive

minimum wage until they can pass a LIVEABLE wage bill!!

Even a small hike isn't going to do shit. People simply cannot live on air.

Thanks, as always for posting this, Sapphire Blue!!

:loveya: :hug: :loveya: