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Originally Posted by smooth
Do you have any suggstions for what could be done?
The state has two service oriented businesses: Kroger and Wal-Mart.
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Shows how much I know. I would have called them retailers.
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I just lectured this the other day, so I'm trying to recall the exact figure, but there are about 3.5 million full time workers in our workforce that make under the poverty level.
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In your lecture, did you specify how many of these are teenagers, as opposed to heads of households? My college-age son just got a raise to $8/hour after six months of working at a clothing store.
That's what makes it hard for me to figure out why so many are saying it's impossible to make over minimum wage.
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The simplest thing is to raise the minimum wage to a standard appropriate to the buying power it had when it was instituted decades ago. Studies the professor cited to the class indicated that the notion that jobs suffer from increases in minimum wages is a myth, but I haven't read them myself.
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That would be simple, all right. A company that has been in my area for 60 years just moved to Idaho, specifically to lower expenses. It succeeded in cutting its overhead by about 50%, which they attributed to the cost of doing business in California.
When Gray Davis was governor, he passed 91 labor laws. 90 of them were detrimental to business. The 91st clarified an earlier detrimental one. That's why California is one of two states where employers have to pay overtime on the time in excess of 8 hours a day.
I can tell you as an employer, that law alone caused me to raise prices and terminate one employee. Well technically, she quit, but it was a ploy so that I'd beg her to stay, and I didn't.
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In orange county, even shady parts of town that I guarantee most posters on this board would not live in, average rent is ~$1,600. That would be about a 2 bedroom apartment, so I don't know how long a family of 4 could live there.
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In many areas of California, newly immigrated Philipino families used to live two or more families to a house which had been purchased jointly.
After a few years, one family would sell their portion to the other, and buy a house of their own with the profit.
Americans, of course, would prefer to have laws requiring higher pay, along with government handouts. A situation such as the above is much too undignified. It's better to ask for handouts.
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So we need to do a couple of things:
1. Raise the minimum wage commensurate with inflation
2. Raise the poverty threshhold
3. Develop a plan to get these workers some preventive health care.
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4. Complain about increased "outsourcing" and file for unemployment. You've just succeeded in raising prices and the cost of doing business at the very places where the poorest shop.
Something tells me your lecture wasn't delivered to a business school.