Quote:
Originally posted by Ustwo
You obviously are missing some basic ideas about the minimum wage.
#1 The minimum wage is NOT meant to be lived off of. Its for basic entry level unskilled jobs. You can't afford to pay every teenager working for you a 'living wage'.
#2 As such if you made it a living wage, jobs would be lost. This would be first in the cost, second in the economy as a whole as productivity goes down. Many small business would fail, such as my brother in laws. He has a small pizza place and employs a lot of local kids there part time. Prices would HAVE to go up if the wage were raised, and at his current margins he would go under. He wouldn't be making more money per pizza, but he would have to charge more, if the price is higher less people will be able to buy said pizzas, hence bye bye pizza place.
#3 Unions always push the democrats to raise the minimum wage, but only because they get to base their wages off the minimum. If the minimum is X dollars for UNSKILLED labor, they can argue their skilled labor is worth more.
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I'll cover your #2 first, because I owned a pizza shop from 1995-97. I paid my workers $7.50 an hour and gave benefits. Yes, it hit me in my pocket but it maintained a good crew and the best and most reasonably priced product in the town and I still made a very comfortable living. If I had been like many places and paid minimum wage I would have had the turnover many places do today and I would have been spending more than what I saved in the continous training and extra hours I would have been there. Unfortunately my 1 mistake was not my wages but the fact I gambled it away and trusted the wrong people to run the place, but such is life.
As for Minimum Wage, many companies are paying just barely above it and calling it "competitive wage". As the manufacturing jobs are leaving more and more people are having to turn to these "basic entry level unskilled jobs". With College grants and loans being reduced and fewer being able to afford college these jobs are about all there are if these people can find them. Then these people have to pay for their own insurance and get very few benefits. Raises of 25 cents a year, if they are lucky just doesn't cut it.
And no minimum wages do not affect places with fewer than 15 employees or making less than I believe $150,000. I have no problem with teens making minimum wage.
Here's a link to a nice stat sheet to read over.
http://www.adaction.org/mwbook.html
The biggest problem in the USA right now is the fact that businesses complain they can't find good loyal help, so they pay crap. The laborers feel they get paid crap with no benefits so they show no loyalty.
Henry Ford, the most anti-unionite ever, said, "pay your workers enough to buy your product and live in comfort and you will always have customers." Big Business has gotten away from that idea.