Maybe it’s even time to discuss a ‘living wage’?

Thanks for the post, Jon. It’s nice to know this issue is getting some public attention.

Inflation……….Raise the minimum wage and housing costs will increase, groceries will increase and those working minimum wage jobs will be in the exact same place they are now. In fact, to cover the higher cost of those jobs you will just see a subsequent rise in prices of those products. Passing on the cost to consumers isn’t the answer.

Its time to end the minimum wage and allow the people to choice what wage they are willing to work for.

The last raise in the minimum wage was under… (drumroll please) … George W. Bush. Sure, Obama campaigned on the concept of raising it, but he clearly had no intention of doing anything about it – it wouldn’t have been hard with historic Congressional majorities, but funneling money to Goldman Sachs took precedence.

Maybe raising the minimum wage will join his list of abandoned pledges that he will campaign on addressing in the first year of his second term, along with immigration reform, a public health insurance option, legislation facilitating union organization, being against free trade with the likes of Columbia…

How was your weekend Trollholio?

In good conscience I must remind the lurkers, when reading comment numero dos, that countries with a living wage standard like those socialist places in Europe? They have a better standard of living. Higher wage doesn’t mean pricing goods out of reach. Look up Sweden, The Netherlands, etc., for examples.

yes and Greece and Spain…….

Comment 2 is from a troll. nuf said. Minimum wage has been set politically so that if you work a 40 hour week at min. you come up just above the poverty level. No one could live a decent life at the poverty level or at a level @$250 more. It is another example of how the D’s have abandoned their stated principles.

You really don’t think that raising the labor costs and McDonalds and Burger King won’t be pushed through to the consumer in the way of higher prices? Adding more value to your employer than $7.25 an hour is still the best way to increase your compensation.

Again. You don’t think higher labor costs would drive higher prices?

Cool story bro.

I have a friend who works at McDonald’s in California. He was hired as part of their huge hiring blitz last year. He was promoted to shift manager 4 months ago. He now runs the closing shift, from 3pm to 11pm. Know how much his pay was increased?

None. He was told he had to go through a 6 month evaluation period in his new position before they would increase his pay.

—————————————–

There’s this magical thing the government can do called regulation. The corporations that provide our goods and services like BofA, Aetna, WalMart, McDonalds; these companies are turning record profits.

Raising wages would pass that along to employees and cycle that money back into the economy at a localized level. If companies pass that cost on to the consumer it is only because they are unwilling to accept a smaller-than-record profit margin. That’s called greed. Enter regulation. Cost controls on health care, mortgage costs, commodities; these things would cut into corporate profits. They would not eliminate them.

The problem here is not that corporations would pass that cost along. The problem is that our government lets them.

So your buddy is getting a raise when he proves he can manage a McDonalds. Sounds pretty reasonable. If your he doesn’t want to work for $min. wage perhaps he should be looking for a new job.

You want the federal government to regulate the cost of a Big Mac? Why would any company consider doing business in this country if the federal government is dictating prices? What incentive is there to start new business?

Geez I just can’t figure out why people suggest that the U.S. is becoming a nanny state?

Ignoring trolls is the recommended policy of FDL. I have been chastised in the past and feel compelled to remind DON’T FEED THE TROLLS

I struggle with it because I know that at any given time, in any given thread, there are hundreds or thousands of lurkers reading that trash. I worry that if we don’t refute it the trash may stick in someone’s brain. Probably an empty concern.

Thanks BSb.

Raising a counter point to this ludicrous idea that raising the minimum wage will solve the worlds problems is considered trolling? Don’t have any real legs to stand on in this debate do you?

Again, see The Netherlands or Sweden. Or Iceland. There are still businesses there. Everyone didn’t pack up and run away, and those countries are much MUCH smaller consumers than the US.

Iceland? That is the financial model we should follow? The same Iceland that had its currency collapse in 2010.

What should we raise minimum wage to in this country?

I always thought that if we could tie increases in the minimum wage to congressional pay raises, so that one couldn’t happen without the other, we’d have one or two good results.

Here, in Santa Fe, the minimum wage is $10.29/hr. Now, if we could get out of state corporations to pay the same income tax rate that local businesses pay, we’d have a level playing field encouraging fairer competition.

Is Santa Fe a ghost town? Did all the business pack up and leave when the socialist heathen wealth re-distributor pagan government there took profit away from hard-working American Corporations?

/s

Thanks HH. *g*

They just repeat meme they heard on Faux News or from Rush.
I think FDL is a haven for progressives (at least it is for me).
Trolls have no logic to their commentary. Fallacious arguments only (as we see here- counterattack, glittering generalities, and straw man arguments) Adds nothing to our fund of knowledge.

Why don’t you look up the cost of living in Santa Fe vs. the national average. Santa Fe, where the average cost of a 3 bedroom house is over 620k. Thank you for proving my point.

what knowledge on the subject did you add to this post? What would you make minimum wage? $10 an hour? $12? Why stop there? Maybe we should just make it 250k a year. Then nobody would be poor right?

I believe you made these same arguments with another troll BE some time ago. You would do well to let it pass and save your very cogent points and comments for real debaters not these boobus americanus that think they know something because they read a bumper sticker.

Ironic. You have contributed absolutely nothing to this conversation while I have provided fact after fact debunking the myth of “raising the minimum wage” Who is simply reading a bumper sticker?

The Obama-Biden Plan (Change.gov) 2008

Make Work Pay for All Americans
…
Raise the Minimum Wage to $9.50 an Hour by 2011: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that people who work full-time should not live in poverty.

Link

Edit: “I was unable to find a single reference to it on his campaign website; if one does exist it is extremely well hidden.”

SCRUBBED

A minimum wage needs to be high enough so that an individual working full time can support themselves, otherwise safety net programs are a subsidy to the corporation and makes us taxpayers unwilling contributors to corporate welfare.

Exactly; the difference between pay from working a 40 hour week and the level at which the Government says you are in poverty should be significant. Right now it is about $250. It should be at least $4000.

When you raise the minimum wage you are also raising the poverty level of income. You can raise it to whatever you like but the subsequent rise in prices will just mean those people will have the same level of purchasing power as they did before you raised minimum wage.

I can agree with this part of the comment

” groceries will increase”

I am in favour of increasing groceries. who isn’t?

the person also said

“allow the people to choice what wage they are willing to work for.”

yes. let’s allow everyone to choice what they want.

Minimum wage is more than $15 an hour is U.S. dollars in Australia. Americans accept shit from their politicians and then worship them.

Its time to end the minimum wage and allow the people to choice what wage they are willing to work for.

You call that a choice? Idiot.

Absolutely. If you think you can find a better wage elsewhere then you’re probably right and should take the steps to do so. Why are you trying to get people to settle for a minimum wage job?

What an utterly deceitful “interpretation.” If I hadn’t flagged you as a worthless trolling bastard already, I’d do it now.

Funny how the “troll” seems to be the only one here bringing facts to the table. Not one other person has suggested why raising the minimum wage wouldn’t drive higher inflation. Is this place completely void of any intellectual integrity?

ann rynd lied :
she accepted SocSec & Medicare, just like those she chastised as lazy moochers throughout her lifetime (i.e. liar)
ann rynd was immoral :
she had affairs with married members of her cult (i.e. immoral)

get yer head out of yer bottom – the US was strongest and its most compassionate when the highest personal tax rate was 90 percent and its tariffs were highly protectionist .. go read a history book, not a high school level romance novel

there is no ‘free market’ and no rich person made his wealth without the help of society at large and/or being a greedy jackass (note: greedy jackassery is prohibited in that Bible you are always carrying around and talking about)

So far you are the only person in this comments section to have brought up Ayn Rand, the bible and tax rates. I’m not sure what your contribution is in this thread other than to spew some misguided hatred at the people you fear I associate with. This thread is about what to do with the minimum wage. Not taxes, bibles, social security or Ayn Rand.

By ‘willing to work for’ you mean what an employer will pay. If they could get away with 50 cents an hour they would. If they could get away with no breaks or lunch, they would. If they could use child labor they would. If they could make you shop at the company store they would. We had these battles 100 years ago.
How does it solve anyones problems to have people making even less in this economy? How much extra welfare and food stamps would we need in your no minimum wage world?

If people aren’t willing to work for those wages then Burger King or whoever we are talking about will be forced to raise wages in order to hire. Its straight out of economics 101. However, the fact remains that people are willing to work for those wages and in fact are willing to work for significantly less.

What kind of effort and company loyalty will you be expecting at 4 dollars for 12 hours of work? Will I be able to bring my child with me? Don’t you think the wages are what they are now because people don’t feel like going to work for less than what it takes to survive?

Bloomberg editors and their boss seem at variance about wage bills:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/13/mayor-bloomberg-compares-living-wage-bill-communism_n_1424461.html

so, you are also a lair – ever heard of the labor market, you dishonest douche bag ..

and, you sure gots yer hackles up there defending the slimy, lying, cult-fraud know as ann rynd – those facts I presented are indeed accurate & factual & verifiable as opposed to what you (a classic nut-case ideologue adherent to a shifty cult of greed justifying amoralists) labeled these historical facts as; “spewing hate” – don’t know if you are a woman, ann, so just in case, I’ll call you ALEC, nice try with all of that dishonest ‘probing’ with all those dishonest questions and all of that dishonest portrayal of so called ‘facts’

here is one for our other readers: when the federal minimum wage goes up, ass-hat says that the only answer for merchants is to raise the price of cheeseburgers…well, that is a lie – they could also make the decision to get by with less profit & ensuring that their employees (their work family) are not living in abject and stifling poverty!

go read your bible, chump – jesus was a homeless guy that told the people who sought from him wisdom – “give away everything you own to the poor and follow me” & do me a favor and remind joel osteen that he is a liar too

Actually Greece is a product of people FAILING TO PAY TAXES.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/world/europe/02evasion.html?pagewanted=all

Using that logic there should not have been any inflation since the last wage increase. Otherwise it is pretty easy to point out that while wage increases may indeed be a factor in price increases they are not the actual cause of inflation.

We should raise the minimum wage. Today, all those “businessmen” paying their workers at the minimum are depending on the govt. to make up the difference using food stamps, earned income tax credit, the women and children health care, etc. These “businessmen” are more than happy to stick us with outsized bills while they get outsized profits (job creators my a#$!). Increasing the minimum wage is a much better, more direct way to help these workers. It also helps some, like young people, who don’t qualify for the extra federal goodies so they can buy things like .. education.

As for Obama didn’t .. You bet he didn’t. One of about 100 good reasons to not re-elect the LOTE who is a WOTE (worse-of-two-evils) by my reckoning.

“A lot of people say we can’t increase the minimum wage during recessions because it’ll have this big negative effect,” said Allegretto, whose study was published in the journal Industrial Relations. “We didn’t find that — in general, or when there were recessions.”

http://snipurl.com/233w7mi
http://snipurl.com/233w78t