Minimum Wage Hike Won't Go Far

If she's working for minimum wage, when would she be able to spare the time to acquire new job skills?

Did you miss the part where she has kids? "Job skills" aren't her something she can acquire while feeding her children at the same time.

Its not her fault the government made it easier for people to be unemployed than to be employed.

Yeah, it is a shame that she thought of what was best for her kids first. She should be thinking about you and your piddly tax concerns.

You people will spend hundreds of billions on weapons you don't need, but some woman with kids tries to just barely squeak by in life and you get all pissed off.

What does welfare in each state cost? I bet it is less than half a percent what we spend on missiles and tanks.

If she's working for minimum wage, when would she be able to spare the time to acquire new job skills?

I have several women in my classes with multiple children, yet they still find time to better themselves.

She's not some poor victim, she's lazy and has now chosen to become a drain on society, two traits that she will likely instill in her children as they get older.

Who the hell are you to judge people? She was working; she saw she could live easier by not working. She's giving her children more than she'd be able to by working, and hey, maybe she's attending a community college to give her better job skills. Why should she scrape for nickels at a minimum wage job when she could be home with her children and give them a better living that way?

Don't blame the people who use the system to their advantage; blame the system for being so easy to abuse.

indecent wrote:

Don't blame the people who use the system to their advantage; blame the system for being so easy to abuse.

So I shouldn't blame the person who broke into the bank, I should blame the bank's security system?

Its not her fault the government made it easier for people to be unemployed than to be employed.

Well it is her fault for having kids she can't afford. Maybe she should beg for enough money (can't be that much) to rent a U-Haul and move to some place where she can make a "living wage" even without skills.

Maybe if, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. would pay a living wage and benefits more people would work.

Wal-Mart actually pays pretty well and has a pretty good benefits program. But why not just force them to pay everyone $20/hour? Oh wait, then nobody could afford to shop there. Wal-Mart's relentless cost-cutting measures are a boon for both the poor and rich. A raise in wages means fewer of those "rollbacks" that I love so much.

The minimum wage is a monstrous attack on poor people. It is one of the most damaging products of self-righteous demagogues and wanna-be do-gooders. Also on that list are "open space" and "anti-sprawl" laws that make housing so utterly unaffordable in so many places.

You really think, given the choice between raising prices, and simply accepting lesser profits, that companies are going to choose the latter? When your costs increase, you raise prices, you don't just say "Oh well, I guess we'll make less money now".

Instead of the CEO making about 12 million a year, maybe he would have to get by on about 1 or 2 million.

CEOs make a lot of money because there is intense demand for them. A good CEO can make a difference of billions of dollars in profits (think Jack Welch at GE). If you cut his pay, which would only enable a negligible increase in the salaries of the lowest paid employees, he could (and should) leave for a company that better appreciates him. As for shareholders taking a lesser cut, that's just reprehensible. Wal-Mart management has one ultimate purpose: make money for the shareholders. They own the company and every action taken should be in their ultimate, long-term benefit. If you want to pay people more than they are worth (not what they need but what they are actually worth in the free market), then go to your local Wal-Mart, and give out a $100 bill to every employee there. Do not, however, promote legislation requiring unfairly high wages and higher prices.

Could she afford them at the time? We don't know do we. Where is the other half that made them, I noticed you don't blame him.

I'm sure he's scum too, and certainly should be paying his share. However, she alone had the ability to not have kids. Also, I've got a pretty good hunch she was just as poor when she got pregnant.

Move to a palce that pays a living wage? Where is minimum wage a living wage?

How about a place that doesn't pay minimum wage? (Incidentally, is there a Wal-Mart that actually pays minimum wage?) I don't know if I'd be able to find a minimum wage job where I live, and rent is quite affordable.

Every economic study I've read of minimum wage laws indicates it actually hurts poor people. A basic study of economics reveals this to be true. "We stopped doing what was right and starting doing what sounds good."

I touched on this (see "monstrous"), but wasn't so explicit. People can make all of the passionate arguments they want, and indulge in all sorts of illogical fantasies, but the unmistakable truth is that the minimum wage is bad for poor people. Even with all of the crack-pot economic theories out there (Keynesian), this is one of those basic economic truths that pretty much everybody agrees on. Anybody who doesn't should immediately be dismissed as a complete failure as a human being. It's just that obvious to anybody who has spent any effort researching it.

Wow. Yeah, heaven forbid we expect Americans to make their own way in the world. It's not like she unexpectedly had three kids all of a sudden. She's not injured. In my book, that means she should show personal responsibility and figure out a way out of her situation. She worked that job at Target for two months. Sheesh. What a quitter. If she'd made it through one holiday season and done a decent job she'd quite likely have gotten a better paying position with more responsibility. And this was apparently after a previous period of unemployment.

When I was a little kid, my parents made just above the poverty line. They worked hard, my mom went to take computer classes at night and on weekends and now they're upper middle class. All without asking for any handouts from the government. It's called being an upstanding citizen.

Wal*Mart is a company that is worth just under $200 billion. They employ 1,800,000 people (more people than the entire population of Philadelphia).

The CEO earns $5.23 million. If he were not worth that, the Board of Directors would fire him or reduce his salary.

No, that is not true. Last year he made $8.668 million, and $4.679 million in 2004. Decent compensation but definitely not excessive when compared to his peer group, not even making it into the top 100 of highest paid CEOs.

By comparison, Lee Raymond (ExxonMobil CEO) made $25.773 million in 2005. ExxonMobil and Wal*Mart are 1 and 2 on the Fortune 100.

Source: CEO Compensation, Forbes

they can afford to pay better wages and benfits without hurting the business

They already have a process in place to do so. When the employees acquires more experience and skill, they are promoted. If the market rate for a cashier is X per hour. Wal-Mart might elect to pay X + $1 to attract a better quality employee. Or, they may decide that they can pay X - $1 if they think that they can get by with a lesser qualified worker. On the whole, you are probably not going to find a tremendous variance in the pay rate for identical positions in that employers are looking to pay the least that they can to accomplish what they need from the employee. It is up to the employee to bring more to the table in order to earn more.

The Board of Directors is looking for the very same thing on the executive level. If they could find a CEO that could accomplish their goals for $100,000 per year, that is what they would be paying the CEO.

As someone else noted, higher wages are going to cause higher prices. If Wal-Mart and the other retailers chose to increase wages across the board by 20%, the prices of the goods on the shelf would rise. So, the net effect to the employee is to earn more and have to spend more on goods.

Steven Sloane wrote:

What is unfortunate that one of the USA's largest companies pays crap wages, crap benefits.

Why do you think Wal*Mart is able to do that? Perhaps that is all those jobs are worth?

The point is they can but choose not to.

The Wal-Mart shareholders are making the choice to maximize profit. If Wal-Mart management made the decision to raise expenses and take a lower profit, the company would see a huge erosion of market capitalization. A publicly traded company is different from the companies run by the "small business owners" that you cite.

For every one promotion to a living wage position, there are probably 30 at the lowest crappy wage.

You have determined that there is that low a ratio between happy people and unhappy people at Wal-Mart? Please share that one. One assumption that one can make though is that for every happy worker at a 100 person small business, there will be 18,000 happy workers at Wal-Mart.

You statement assumes that all employees spend all thier money at Wal-Mart

No, it does not make that assumption. If you raise wages by 20% the prices will find a new equilibrium considering a 20% increase in the labor portion of those goods. If only some retailers have "such crap wages and benefits", who is going to be the arbiter of fair wages?

Why should anyone be concerned about Tara Dennis, but Tara Dennis? She had the opportunity to make the choices about better preparing herself for the job market, about having children she might not be able to support, and so on.

Sounds more like a personal responsibility issue to me.

I am sure it is, but what do we do, let her keep living off the taxpayers??

No, get her off it now. Then, set our politicians off on something more productive than debating what constitutes a living wage. Have them fix the broken welfare system. It is the rules they made that created a system that can be abused so badly.

Minimum wage need to be a living wage.

Why should it be, when the large majority of people making minimum wage are either teenagers living with their parents, or people who make that wage for 6 months or so before moving to a higher wage? Do you really think a teenager working at a fast food place on the weekend and a couple nights a week needs to be paid enough per hour, that if he was working full time he could support himself and two kids?

Steven, I do not believe that raising the minimum wage will stop the poor living off the taxpayers.

Personally, I think that the answer is in what you are not asking people to do. Care for her personally. If we as a society voluntarily took care of our less fortunate then we would not need government welfare.

What's the government to do? Stop paying. Simple enough in my book. Work or die, the same way it's always been.

Her children? Not my problem. She can give them up for adoption if she can't take care of them by herself. Can't find a job at minimum wage? Get rid of minimum wage then. There will be a lot more crappy jobs then. The problems you point out only exist because of the welfare state all around, I'm saying end it all: minimum wage, child labor laws, welfare, and definitely end prison for non-violent offenders. Why do you think we have some inherent right to be better than a third world country? These attitudes have driven almost all the manufacturing work out of the country that was once the world leader in manufacturing. The US really does not have all that much going for it nowadays. If we're importing a huge amount more than we're exporting we are @!$%#ed. We're living on credit and debt, and that's not sustainable.

What exist because of the welfare state?

The secondary costs you keep bringing up. Why should they go to a government system for adoption? Did America have a child services department anywhere in the country in 1800? Did anybody think life sucked without it? Our country was much better off without this government "safety net" crapola.

Ah, the lack of CPS sucked the same way the lack of the income tax sucked, since they added that as well :)

Seriously though, the things you describe that happen to children all do suck. Those are all illegal for a reason. Thinking about it, I guess I really don't see any alternative for the state except to take responsibility for them once they find out about the situation. I wonder if it's really the right approach though? The statistics for kids who've been in the foster care system are really seriously grim though as far as future success. Anecdotally, I've known people who were seriously abused at home who went on to be normal adults. I'd imagine there are no real stats on those kids though, since they never ended up in any government systems. I think it's an open question whether for most kids staying in an abusive family situation is better or worse than going into foster care, though in extreme examples where the child seems likely to die clearly being taken away is better. So while I can see that it's sometimes necessary, I'm very wary about the psychological harm being done to the children by putting them in a government system.

I agree- taxes are much too high. Lets cut the biggest part of our spending- national defense. And lets promise to not spend more than we have.

How does that sound?

No deficit spending is fine by me - let's see if Democrats will enact it. The New Deal is what got the tax and spend ball rolling in 1933 and it never stopped. Prior to that fed spending was 3% of GDP and now it is 20%.

Fed spending ( mostly national defense) was 44% of GDP in WW2 and people are still poorer today so I don't know why you think national defense is the culprit. 33% of federal spending is social security and medicare. 20% is national defense. So if you are going to start whacking at the biggest fed items, now you know where to start.

gnoleb, there are three main areas where we spend most of our money. Defense, interest on our debt, and social security. Defense and social security will both need to be cut significantly. Not only should we avoid deficit spending, we should run surpluses every year so that we can actually pay down our debt.

She was working. She stopped. She's not the working poor anymore.

Hmm, that wasn't in the article itself. Sorry, I didn't read the text under the photo.

You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less.

http://www.mises.org/econsense/ch36.asp

"First among the reasons given for raising the minimum wage, indeed for having one in the first place, is to assist the working poor. Though it is quite appealing to suggest that everyone should earn a decent wage, it is difficult to imagine that it is this easy. If it is, then why do so many countries have workers earning so little? Have these countries just missed the boat on appropriate legislation? If it is possible to mandate high wages, then why not also have low prices for food, shelter, clothing, and everything else that is good?"
- http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg18n1c.html

why not also have low prices for food, shelter, clothing, and everything else that is good?

This is a great argument. Setting prices for goods is communism. Why is setting prices for labor not?

"Pay rates raised without regard to productivity are a virtual guarantee of unemployment, whether it is done in the name of ending "exploitation" in the Third World or providing "a living wage" in the United States."

You speak of goodwill, but a raise in minimum wage has a detrimental effect on poor people. You would actually be hurting poorer people. How can one argue against the fact that you cannot increase ones value by simply making it illegal to offer him anything less. Improving living conditions or quality of life just isn't a simple as passing a law.