Minimum Wage
 

Are you for or against a minimum wage? Why?

I'm against it for the typical republican, free-market reasons. People should be paid what the free market dictates they deserve. The government should stay out of it. It benefits a few at the expense of many.

Amen, brother.

I'll make an alternative argument against. The government shouldn't be able to tell me how much I can sell my labor for. That's between me and my employer. Why is it legal for me to work for free but not for more than free but less than x?

minimum wage makes work more attractive than welfare.

I mostly disagree with this, but can agree with it in part:

I agree because I believe in working and earning one's lot in life.

I disagree because I've seen too many people who would rather sit on their hineys and cash their welfare check than actually get off the couch and work for their money.

I don't see where the disagreement is (re minimum wage).

A lot of students at BYU make sure they don't work for over a certain # of hours so they can still receive their pell grant.

Most of us are doing the same thing, just on a smaller scale. We're just more educated than most poor people are to see that.

Blame the freakin system, not the people. Let's change the incentive structure so more people would rather work than receive welfare. Raise the minimum wage.

to keep your employer from cajoling you and exploiting you

The disagreement is that the government is telling private business how much it has to pay it's employees.

I blame the people who work the system. Why get a job when you don't have to do anything to get a check?

I'm not talking about the students who need to work less than x amount of hours to be able to get a Pell Gran. I'm talking about the lazy people who don't want to work or go to school.

agreed

I'm saying both are the same thing at different scales. We do the same thing those "lazy people" do when given the same incentive structure.

Got it.

Still, those who work and go to school understand the value of work. Quite e difference, IMO.

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I think Minimum Wage is an imperfect solution to a problem for which we do not have a better solution.

Ideally, people are paid what their worth. But in a perfect economic system, each employed human being would be making the greatest contribution possible to the economy-- and I don't believe that people are not capable of contributing more than 7.50 and hour.

Given that the economic system is not perfect, and we have not been able to figure out how to get everybody to contribute to the fullest extent, minimum wage is a good safety net to make sure people don't get screwed. I reluctantly accept it.

Your analysis is dead-on target. I don't know if you're aware of economic studies on this. Most studies show that the minimum wage ha a negative effect on employment, but many economists support it anyway because it protects those who need the living wage.

Perhaps those workers should go into business for themselves.

The less government in the private sector, the better.

True.

However, there is ample opportunity in this country. The American Dream is alive and well, despite many who claim otherwise. All it takes is the desire to do what it takes.

I don't think this debate is gonna get anywhere if you keep talking in warm-fuzzy ideological mantras and CaliCoug is speaking at a different level of concreteness.

Are you saying that what I say is untrue?

While I can agree with this, I don't accept it as a reason to not go to school and make a better life for anyone. It can be done.

Those willing to work for minimum wage only deserve the minimum wage and nothing more. Still, my original complaint is that I don't like the idea of the government telling me how much I would have to pay someone should I hire employees.

reality's a lot more complicated

Reality is what you make it.

only in your utopia

No, I don't deserve anything in the sense that I was born into a white middle class family. (Good guess). I'm saying that if people aren't willing to do what they have to do - no matter what it is - deserve their life.

There is no excuse for anyone to not get a good education. It's all a matter of if one is willing to do it. While I had the opportunity to get an education because of baseball at Marist and took advantage of it by getting a degree, when I decided to go to mortuary school, I was rejected from my first two choices because of the color of my skin. Fine, I applied somewhere else and went there. No reason to whine about it.

My guess is that liberals love to have victims because without victims, there is no reason for liberals to exist.

King Benjamin was a wise man. We all are beggars in some sense; however, there comes a time when we need to rely on ourselves to make something of our life.

My reality is what I made.

My parents were both educators until I was 12 when my dad decided to get his general contractor's license and went into business for himself. He and mom worked hard to provide food and shelter for the kids. By the time I graduated high school, my dad's business was doing great, but he did all of us kids a favor and didn't buy us what we wanted or offer to pay for school. My parents decided that we would be better off if we did it ourselves.

Fortunately, I had worked my ass of in baseball to be good enough to play in exchange for my education.

Everything I have, I've done on my own. I bought my own home on my own credit. I did what had to be done.

I'll be honest that I never thought about me being white as the reason behind my ability to get where I am, because I don't play that game. I believe that anyone can succeed if they are willing to do what it takes. Some may have to work harder than others, but the key is the willingness to do it.

Perhaps to you it is sickening that I believe people deserve what they get, but I don't worry about that. Why is it sickening to think people can succeed if they want to succeed? Why do they have to have a safety net to fail?

Studies have shown that even your great-grandparents circumstances can be a good predictor of your economic success.

As most of you know, I grew up in a Children's Home, joined the Church when I was 15. Went on a mission and then to college (all on financial aid) and am now doing quite well. Most of the kids I grew up with are either in jail, dead, or complete losers working dead end jobs, multiple divorces or children out of wedlock, etc.

What is the difference between them and me? If environment is the determining factor, why have I accomplished what I have? The liberal line about lack of educational and job oppotunities is complete BULLSHIT. And I for one, am one conservative who is not just saying this from an ivory tower. I have walked the walk.

I haven't been following the thread, but if it's an argument against environment, read the last sentence of your first paragraph.

It's an argument FOR personal responsibility and taking the opportunities available. Environment clearly has an impact ... no argument there.

the kids in my ward, where no one in the family has ever been to college, are facing an uphill battle. As far as I can tell, only one is serious about his academics, and is rising above his background.

My parents struggled with money for most of my life. But they were far ahead of the desperate poor in that they owned a modest home, and my dad had a PhD. So I guess in a way, I rose above my background in terms of career and education, but not by *that* much. If I hadn't had parents encouraging me to do better, I don't know where I'd be.

I'm still awaiting the CG liberal cognoscenti to tell me how my minimum wage posts show that I'm in lock step with the GOP.

You don't believe that people are not capable of contributing more than 7.50 an hour? Try this on for size:

I work in the Document Management business. One facet of our business is a service bureau where we scan our customer's documents and convert them into digital images. Before we can scan the documents, they need to be prepared: staples pulled, paperclips removed, tears taped, etc. We have several employees that spend 40 hours a week pulling staples. Most of these employees have extremely low education, skill, common sense, and life mangement skill levels. It takes a special kind of person to sit there and pull staples for 40 hours a week. Most of these people are not self-sufficient from their employment and never will be. They generally live with a parent or some other type of guardian. Most of them don't have their own transportation. Some of them are just housewives looking to make an extra buck with minimal responsibility. Some of these people have been doing this job for 15+ years. We pay them minimum wage.

We charge our customers in terms of cents per image. In the past, we used to charge between $.09 and $.10 per image. Now, we face competition from cheaper service bureaus in the Philippines, Mexico, Bangladesh, etc. Our prices have been driven down to $.05 and $.06. When a minimum wage increase happens, we either have to eat the cost or else raise our price to the customer. If we raise the price to our customers too much then the business will go to Bangladesh. If the business goes to Bangladesh then we will be laying off our lowest skilled workers - workers that can't really compete in any other setting.

Business is like water, traffic, and electricity - they all seek the easiest path. Water will flow to the lowest level. Traffic and electricity will flow through the path of least resistance. Business will go to the lowest cost provider all other things being equal. In a business like software development or other knowledge work, all other things aren't always equal. The Indian programmer may be 5 times as cheap as me but he doesn't have the communication skills and analysis skills and experience that I have. Thus, employers are willing to pay a higher price for my skills because all other things aren't equal. But if the only thing I'm competing on is price then I better watch out because someone will always come along and do it cheaper. In the case of staple pulling, about the only thing there is to compete on is price. It's not like these workers can be "retrained" for a different career. Staple pulling is a stable and safe environment and provides basic employment for people that would find operating the grill or deep frier at McDonalds a dangerous challenge. In my experience as a businessman, raising the minimum wage only hurts the very people it is supposed to be helping.

I just don't understand what makes the do-gooder social engineering type of people, with their "one size fits all" approach and their wasteful, bureaucratically administered 'solutions', so completely unable to grasp the Law of Unintended Consequences?

get rid of the minimum wage. why isn't there a minium price for a medium sized grapefruit? both are commodities to be traded.

get rid of welfare. then there are no decisions on "how hard/much to work". Let private charities deal with those who can't work. I'd gladly give the portion of my taxes being wasted on welfare to private orgs (and it would likely require a much smaller amount).

Of course, the odds of this ever happening is nigh unto 1 chance in an avagadros number.

how many wards can't even handle their own charity needs? a lot.

We packed two vans to the brim with the Bishop's Storehouse run this month. I guarantee you our branch doesn't even remotely get close to covering the price tag for this from internal fast offerings.

College isn't for everybody. Like it or not, there DOES need to be a working class. Those who have the gumption to rise above it, great. Others will not. It sounds cold but it is reality.

I think you'd be surprised. You had the encouragement, but it's a bit of a leap to say you wouldn't be where you are without the encouragement.

IMO, the bottom line is that some of us are wired as "go-getters" and some are not.

I remember working as a lube tech in high school at Pennzoil when minimum wage in California first went up 10-12 years ago. I had been working my ass off for the better part of a year and earned a few nickel and dime pay raises along the way to the point where I was making a bit more than minimum wage. Then they raised wages and I only made a nickel more an hour over minimum wage and they wouldn't raise me the difference. They hired two new guys that next summer at minimum wage. I had been there a year and I was training these guys making $0.05 more an hour than them. So I quit.

I don't think there should be any minimum wage. Let the market determine that as Brian suggested.

This is kind of what I mean. There are people who have, as you point out, "low education, skill, common sense, and life management skill levels." But how many of these things cannot ultimately be acquired? Maybe I just have too much faith in humankind to think that we can't find a way to make most people more useful than $7.50/hour.

The best solution is to make workers worth more, which is not the same thing as paying them more. We're not sure how to make them worth more.

if you give them better machines their work will be worth more

Let's hold everybody else down and make them dumb and ignorant.

It's cold and it's counterproductive. Everyone can benefit from an education, even the working class.

Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, the vehicle to extend the American dream accessible to everybody.

Why does the left believe that people are incapable of succeeding without the help of the government?

we don't. we're trying to determine the factors that correlate with success so we can determine how the government can expand opportunity to more people. you keep making oversimplistic, dichotomous statements.