Company Raises It's Minimum Wage to $70,000 and All Hell Breaks Loose

Khane_sl said:

I think this is vastly overblown. I don't think it's nearly as dramatic as suddenly hundreds of thousands of people being completely out of jobs because nobody can afford to pay their workers that much or people suddenly deciding to give up their current jobs at $15/hr to go work at a fast food place. The job still sucks.

Employers have not been pulling their weight in our economy for entirely too long and we have been bearing that burden through subsidization of said workers because they can't afford healthcare, rent or food at the current minimum wage.

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It seems like you think there are no people who aren't even worth current minimum wage, much less $15. To be honest, I'm not sure what some people I've interviewed are supposed to do for work for any company. I wouldn't let them volunteer for me, much less pay them. They have no disabilities to blame, who knows what their education issues are but I can't solve a complete inability to communicate well or a lack of problem solving with OTJ training in a week. These are people who lose jobs as sign flippers due to poor performance when literally your only duty is to stand on the sidewalk and shuffle the sign a bit.

Palum_sl said:

It seems like you think there are no people who aren't even worth current minimum wage, much less $15. To be honest, I'm not sure what some people I've interviewed are supposed to do for work for any company. I wouldn't let them volunteer for me, much less pay them. They have no disabilities to blame, who knows what their education issues are but I can't solve a complete inability to communicate well or a lack of problem solving with OTJ training in a week. These are people who lose jobs as sign flippers due to poor performance when literally your only duty is to stand on the sidewalk and shuffle the sign a bit.

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Yeah bro, high five. You know what you're right. Every single minimum wage worker in this country has downs syndrome.

Every single facet of life has people who take advantage and don't pull their weight. But they are a small minority and that is NEVER a reason to make everyone else suffer as a result.

You're willing to protect companies who don't pay their fair share of taxes and place the burden on you and me than give your fellow Americans a fair shake.Think about what you're saying for about 20 seconds.

No, there's just a lot of shitty people out there. Not just a 'small minority'. You seem really out of touch with normal or average and below. Like you've never walked into a fast food place with a trainee while the manager desperately tries to get them to do a simple task.

Also, your claim that raising the minimum wage reduces welfare burden isn't contradicted by only me, there's more than a few economists who will admit that the only function of a minimum wage is to make people worth less an hour than the minimum wage unemployable. You know, like Sowell, Friedman...

Palum_sl said:

No, there's just a lot of shitty people out there. Not just a 'small minority'. You seem really out of touch with normal or average and below. Like you've never walked into a fast food place with a trainee while the manager desperately tries to get them to do a simple task.

Also, your claim that raising the minimum wage reduces welfare burden isn't contradicted by only me, there's more than a few economists who will admit that the only function of a minimum wage is to make people worth less an hour than the minimum wage unemployable. You know, like Sowell, Friedman...

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While that's true to an effect - are our worst employable people worse that the worst employable people in the 1960s or so? With how inflation has happened since then, we'd be paying around $12ish IIRC to stick to that same mantra.

I think some padding isn't needed over that personally, but then again, I can see why people would - since it's at times taken over a decade to adjust, thus those that are frustrated with getting it tweaked upwards would want a higher figure to make sure it's too high at times, but doesn't dip low for very long before it's fixed - instead of running critically low for as long as it has this current stretch.

It's also asinine that a full time working adult in most if not all cases if they're only getting minimum wage (or close to it) qualify for public support programs which effectively is just extra salary, just paid for by EVERYONE ELSE - so those less successful businesses that "can't afford to pay their employees more" are benefiting by "communist" policies to use Big Phoenix's favorite word - since a good portion of the working adults there wouldn't be able to justify working there with zero additional support.

If we don't want welfare and such to be any bigger than necessary, bottom line income needs to be higher - period. You either want one or want the other - I'd rather have people working for their money as much as possible myself.

Palum_sl said:

No, there's just a lot of shitty people out there. Not just a 'small minority'. You seem really out of touch with normal or average and below. Like you've never walked into a fast food place with a trainee while the manager desperately tries to get them to do a simple task.

Also, your claim that raising the minimum wage reduces welfare burden isn't contradicted by only me, there's more than a few economists who will admit that the only function of a minimum wage is to make people worth less an hour than the minimum wage unemployable. You know, like Sowell, Friedman...

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So now there are working adults who aren't even worth the current minimum wage? That's practically tyranny Palum. "You're a worthless human being so grab that mop and be glad I pay you anything".

And the true function of minimum wage is to make sure those in power can't take advantage of the desperation of people just trying to stay alive and getting rich off their work. Do you realize how bad things were in this country in the late 1800s and early 1900s?

Also keep in mind that many people working minimum wage are not qualified as full time. Making $15/hr qualifies you as $30k a year but that's standard 40/hr week, which many in the service industry do not get. My wife's restaurant employs something like 30 hourly people and like 4 of them work more than 36 hrs a week and one of them is the catering coordinator. The rest are filled in by part timers who work 2-4 days a week between 4 and 8 hours in a shift.

Khane_sl said:

So now there are working adults who aren't even worth the current minimum wage? That's practically tyranny Palum. "You're a worthless human being so grab that mop and be glad I pay you anything".

And the true function of minimum wage is to make sure those in power can't take advantage of the desperation of people just trying to stay alive and getting rich off their work. Do you realize how bad things were in this country in the late 1800s and early 1900s?

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I think it's rather telling that you don't think there aren't worthless workers. Worse than worthless, often times those employees simply suck money from the company by distracting good employees. Not all minimum wage employees are in this category, of course some are just *gasp* students/part timers/trainees/whatever but the people who cannot get a position above minimum wage at 7.25 clearly aren't worth 15. There are people who simplydo not careat all about work. Not enough to support themselves or their families, not enough to want to do a good job or even keep one, anything.

For whatever reason you cannot disconnect idealism and reality. You aren't alone, of course, why does Apple pocket unending gobs of money with absurd profits while basically enslaving Asians yet get upheld as a 'progressive' (or at least the chic choice of progressives) company? I don't know. What I do know, though, is all your idealism doesn't solve the simple math problem of how a small business owner with little to no margins goes from paying say $8/hr for an employee to $15/hr without gaining any additional benefit out of them and continues to operate without making serious changes (ie, cutting staff and increasing workload).

I would be absolutely thrilled if the floor for employee value was $15/hr because then I'd get all my chicken sandwiches with chicken on them.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Minimum wage jobs arent supposed to be something you live your life doing or raise a family while working. Raising the minimum wage does nothing to solve the problem of why people work those jobs, because a minimum wage job is still minimum wage, whether its $8 or $15.

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Yes, lets repeat tired mantras that don't reflect reality at all - "it's not a solution for the underlying problem" while not actually providing a solution for the underlying problem. GOOD JOB.

Sure, it's better to fix the core problem - small thing with that, the only real solutions involve those people having more money to educate with either directly or indirectly through grants that effectively end up being the same thing at the end of the day. (Higher floor on wages being the least "communist" solution - since you hate communism so much)

And nevermind the fact that even if you educate you can get screwed by being educated wrong for your area if you're not in a coastal state if you're not in a position where moving is an option. Or health turning south/whatever.

The solution to "getting people into jobs that you're supposed to raise a family on" in every single case will be communist to encourage. Make up your damn mind if you like communism or not.

Palum_sl said:

I think it's rather telling that you don't think there aren't worthless workers. Worse than worthless, often times those employees simply suck money from the company by distracting good employees. Not all minimum wage employees are in this category, of course some are just *gasp* students/part timers/trainees/whatever but the people who cannot get a position above minimum wage at 7.25 clearly aren't worth 15. There are people who simplydo not careat all about work. Not enough to support themselves or their families, not enough to want to do a good job or even keep one, anything.

For whatever reason you cannot disconnect idealism and reality. You aren't alone, of course, why does Apple pocket unending gobs of money with absurd profits while basically enslaving Asians yet get upheld as a 'progressive' (or at least the chic choice of progressives) company? I don't know. What I do know, though, is all your idealism doesn't solve the simple math problem of how a small business owner with little to no margins goes from paying say $8/hr for an employee to $15/hr without gaining any additional benefit out of them and continues to operate without making serious changes (ie, cutting staff and increasing workload).

I would be absolutely thrilled if the floor for employee value was $15/hr because then I'd get all my chicken sandwiches with chicken on them.

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Do you think those "distraction" and "worthless" workers actually stick around in any normal low wage environment? Because I can tell you without any question, they do not.

When I did some temp work as a college kid and did some government work, I saw plenty - but those weren't minimum wage people. But working minimum wage or close to it? Slack when it's not time to slack and you're gone.

Sure, there's times those places are overstaffed and they can manage some horseplay but that's more a symptom of how easy it is for someone to say "Shit, I can go to a party or I can make $40 with that 6 hr shift tonight, fuck it - I'll call out" when you're making $7 so you have to flood your staffing with extra hours to cover inevitable higher call-outs than most fields - shockingly when they're making the same consideration to call-out and it's $80-100 at stake for some reason the amount of call-outs go down drastically. (Even for the same people in the same position) Which allows you to run a tighter hours with less extra bodies there just in case someone calls out.

It's a very complicated formula - boiling it down to something simply will inherently be wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Does anyone have a chart comparing min wage over the years against inflation for say the last 30 years? I see a lot of people getting fixiated on certain dollar amounts without any context.

If only someone like Lithose how knows his shit would chime in on this topic instead of larping with lightsabers.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

Minimum wage jobs arent supposed to be something you live your life doing or raise a family while working. Raising the minimum wage does nothing to solve the problem of why people work those jobs, because a minimum wage job is still minimum wage, whether its $8 or $15.

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Nah, man. I mean, why stop at $15 for the minimum wage in reality if you just want to do it to help people. If we just made the minimum wage $85,000.00 a year then everyone would be living an awesome life and doing quality work and wanting to contribute to society in some form. The rich corporate dickheads wouldn't be rich douchebags any more, they could be just like everyone else, and we could all go play golf twice a week together while driving our dream cars and living in a 4500 sqft house with an olympic size pool and 2 acres of land (that we obviously pay a lawn crew to maintain (who also make 85,000 a year)).

I mean, why stop at $15 for the minimum wage in reality if you just want to do it to help people. Actually $85k prob isn't enough to stop those rich douchebags from having their billions and fucking over the 99.5%. Let's go with $185,000.00. Everyone deserves the quality of life that comes from a 6 figure income, after all.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

There is no solution to the problem. There is always going to be a lowest wage and there will always be people who are only employable at that lowest wage. Some people are simply not worth more than $5 or 10 or 15. Simple fact. Regardless of what you feel people deserve or should make, some people simply do not put out enough work or enough quality work to justify such wages.

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Some people don't deserve to earn enough to have a basic level of living and you'd rather them get welfare? Bravo - communist.

You are really moonbatting this argument up now Vaclav.

Palum_sl said:

You are really moonbatting this argument up now Vaclav.

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Right because saying "Nope, never makes sense" with no substance like Big P is doing has any substance.

He's a hypocritic or a moron - he wants lower taxes, with less taxpayers, more handouts (military and welfare now too, apparently!)

My personal goal is for government to be as small as possible - one of the largest arms of government is handouts, handouts become less necessary if fewer people are poor as shit. Period.

-- There was another direction to go with his hypothesis BTW, but I'd rather not go to Godwin territory.

Vaclav_sl said:

My personal goal is for government to be as small as possible - one of the largest arms of government is handouts, handouts become less necessary if fewer people are poor as shit. Period.

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Right..... the government is getting smaller by controlling pay rates..... right.......

ZombieWizardhawk_sl said:

Right..... the government is getting smaller by controlling pay rates..... right.......

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In that aspect it would stay identical - they already control pay rates. It could theoretically help it shrink in other aspects since those aspects would be less needed.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

If you dont want people working minimum wage jobs, get them to work better jobs. Increasing minimum wage doesnt improve their situation. Theyre still at the bottom of the economic barrel.

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More meaningless mantras - how do you get them to better jobs?

Not to mention, there is always a demand for people to work those "shit jobs at the bottom of the economic barrel".