And I repeat, I never said it was. I cited a famous study which found that minimum wage does cause unemployment. I'm arguing for letting people be free to negotiate their own price. Period. If lower wages result from economic freedom where we might get higher wages resulting from government force, I'll take freedom, thank you. You've demonstrated nothing further than a continued insistence that unskilled workers are powerless at the hands of giant corporations. And it's nonsense. To apply for a job is to enter into a negotiation. That means you have something to offer, and that means you have something to negotiate with. There's no way out of that. If you don't get the results you want, you can try elsewhere or do something to make yourself more marketable. Businesses respect equilibrium wage. Labor will go where labor gets the most money for its work. If you offer below the equilibrium wage, why would anyone want to work for you? Extreme business exploitation gave us the robber barons. Extreme government power gave us the Great Leap forward. If given the option of the two extremes, I'll take the first. Correction: The study you cited didn't find a correlation. The study I cited did. Minimum wage employment is definitely selling. You're selling labor. What it really does is protect unions from outside competition, and bills it to the entire consumer base, not to mention those left unemployed as a result. Of course businesses are self-serving. So are employees. So are we all.
products and employees go hand in hand. if an employer doesn't offer competitive wages the more skilled workers go elsewhere. the better the worker the better the product the worker turns out. if you end up with a bunch of unskilled employees working for minimum wage you end up with a product that's cheap. in my line of work you can't afford to turn out cheaply made parts, it's best to pay for a good welder/ machinist that takes pride in their work. good pay= good product= good return. low pay= crap=bad return. when employees are told they have to raise their min. wage then they will be more selective in the hiring process because they have to raise the price of their product and in the global economy competition is tuff.
That is your opinion. It is not the position of the majority, which I support. Nonsense. There is a symbiotic relationship between and employer and his workforce. employers must offer jobs if they want to remain in business. What you are talking about is the law of the United States of America, not the "left wing". That's just more of your peculiar anarchy. If you don;t like the law, get it changed. Good luck with that. There ain't a party in America that advocates this.
Absolutely. Remember we are only talking about the minimum wage offered to unskilled labor. Employees seek better pay and work hard to earn it. Employers seek better work and will pay more to get it. Minimum wage is just the bottom rung of the ladder, below which even unskilled labor cannot afford to live in the USA. In full-time jobs, few employees stay long at minimum wage. Just long enough to establish their value and then they either get promoted or fired. What if the product is sweeping a street? There is no qualitative factor here. An employee either sweeps the street or he doesn't. Minimum wage in most jobs is just a starting point to advancement. But in some jobs there is no job ladder and no value to add, you just get the job done and be paid or you fail to get it done and you get fired. Minimum wage does not protect a lazy employee from being let go. It just says that you cannot pay a unskilled person less than a living wage. That is skilled labor and employees have never minded paying more for more skill and experience. But studies have shown that raising the minimum wage does not cause unemployment. Most places pay more than minimum wage anyway because most employees are skilled and for the reasons that you mention. But . . . the economy has steadily increased over time, inflation has steadily increased over time. Corporate profits have increased, investor profits have increased, corporate salaries have soared, skilled labor wages have increased. It is only natural that the minimum wage salaries increase over time as well. When MacDonalds and Taco Bell are paying more than minimum wage then minimum wage is trailing the equilibrium wage and needs raising. But those raises should be small and happen regularly. Instead we wait long periods and then try to catch them up with a big increase which ruffles feathers and cause worry for employers where a small raise every few years would not cause much of a ripple. I do not support raising the minimum wage instantly to $10.00 from $7.36. But a raise to the equilibrium wage level that fast food is paying these days would be about $8.20 and that seems reasonable to me.
red, i know you are wedded to this wrong headed idea and are not changing your mind. at least try to occasionally consider that freedom has real value, and there is nothing more noble than leaving people alone to mind their own business. politics shouldnt be about scratching for enough power to make decisions for everyone else.the most tragic events in human history are always because people trusted their leaders to protect them and gave them way too much power, when the most important thing is that individuals are allowed to decide things on their own. totalitarianism is dangerous. once in a while, take a stance in favor of minding your own mutherfucking goddamn business.
Well, you cannot seem to grok that 98% of the working citizenry enjoys this noble philosophy and always has. Only the 2% entry-level minimum wage workers that have a history of being exploited are protected by this law. They earn an income below poverty level and you begrudge them this pittance from your trust-funded ivory tower. You take your stances and I'll take mine. I realize that you would like me to stop shredding your arguments, amigo, but it ain't gonna happen.
teenagers starting out only need to make min wage to survive. once they get established their pay will increase accordingly.these adults that get stuck with minimum wage are usually the ones that have bounced from job to job never getting enough experience in 1 particular area to justify making higher wages. I'm trying to teach my kids that the sooner you figure out what you want to do in life, the more successful they'll become earlier in life. find something you enjoy doing and stick with it but make sure you can earn a living doing it. if i quit doing machine work and decided i wanted to be a electrician then i would expect my pay to drop dramatically. but, as i gained experience it would naturally increase.
