In the state where I live they just passed a law increasing thew minimum hourly wage from $5.25 to $6.85. In additon to this they made an amendment to the state constitution that says that the minimum wage will increase each year based on the CPI (consumer price index).
To me this is really bad and alarming. Raising the minimum wage tends to cause some inflation due to increased labor costs sothe increase isn’t as helpful as it seems. More importantly it sets an artifical price floor, the impact is that buisnesses typically end up cutting back hours or laying people off which undermines the point if minumum wage. Even those that are kept don’t really gain significantly from the increase. My main problem with this is that it is tied to CPI so if the nation has a properous year and medium inflation but Colorado isn’t so well off there could easily be an abusrd minumum wage.
The other scary part is that the majority of people who want a higher minimum wage are the poorer majority/masses and if the majority starts voting for themselves and not the good of the country then disaster is imminent.
I understand where you’re coming from. I personally was a little worried about possible inflation resulting from higher minimum wage (I’m in Arizona, and the wage went from 5.15 to 6.15 or something like that…). However, I overheard a conversation that one of my classmates was having with a teacher about the proposition (something that teachers are typically not supposed to talk about, but I find no problem with, by the way). He explained to the student that basically there wouldn’t really be much of an inflation simply due to a rise of the minimum wage. The fact that the companies are already making so much money off of their sandwiches (they used sandwiches as an example) allows the wages to rise a bit without any effect on the economy.
I understand the second part of your argument - what’s good for the majority isn’t necessarily good for the country. However, our congressmen are constantly giving themselves raises. I think it’s about time that the workers got a raise.
I say, we have to see what happens before we can judge how effective or ineffective the raise is. One can certainly speculate and present reasoning behind their predictions, but we really can’t know unless we try it.
I think that everyone votes for themselves and not for the good of the country. Because it is inevitable, I think it is good to have everyone represented, so that things are at least evened out a little bit.
When you are a family living on minimum wage in this country, you ARE living in poverty. Every little thing that is out of line from the normal pattern in your day becomes a huge problem. If your kid comes home and his jacket is wet because it rained, you can’t send him to school for the next day freezing cold in a wet jacket, and you have to work all day so you can’t watch your kid or find the time/money to go to the cleaners… etc.
Also, many of these jobs are hard as hell to do, but there is no union or knowledge to stand up to these people and demand higher wages. I think that if you are a roofer who breathes tar every day for a living in the hot sun, with a life expectancy half that of other people, you should at least get a decent minimum wage where you can survive at home, instead of breaking your back every day and being left to steal, beg, or die for the rest of your rent.
Here in California the minimum wage is becoming $8 in January. The average price of a home here where I live is $450,000. It’s not because we’re all rich, it’s because the jobs pay more and the housing costs more, so it evens out. But I still see minimum wage jobs everywhere. Somebody has to be a cashier, McDonald’s worker, etc. and its not like they commute 500 miles from a less expensive town to get here.
I don’t mean to be aggressive here, but I feel very strongly about this topic. Please don’t take anything as a personal attack against yourself! I will be glad to hear what everyone has to say, there are an extremely large number of factors involved in this.
That is another point, the minimum wage increase for Colorado would would give a family with two parents working at minimum wage about $6,500 more per year which is a significant increase for a family in poverty. However, for every person/family it helps someone else is hurt by getting layed off or a lessening of hours.
Labor eventually comes down to supply and demand, if there are enough people who are willing to clean sewers for $1.00 then companies should be able to hire them for $1.00 an hour (illegal immigration, however, could cause problems), I just don’t see that as worker exploitation. It also works the other way, when not many people want jobs you can get a job higher than minimum wage quite easily.
The thing is, these people are not willing to clean sewers for $1 an hour, they have no other choice. The point of minimum wage is to ensure that even if the business is going to exploit the people, they will be able to survive on that money. Illegal immigrants will live for very low wages because it is better than what they had before they came here. They will do harsh jobs that other people don’t like doing for lower wages and see it as an improvement.
The workers are not organized, they don’t have control over wages without some kind of union. Especially belligerent places like Walmart will fire you if you even bring up the word “union” at all. (not just that either, Walmart is pretty awful but that’s another story)
One word: speculation. It’s a bloody weird concept. If people think that from minimum wage raises comes inflation, then people will start raising their products’ prices as a way of getting prepared and gathering money so that when the prices rise, they’ll have some savings. Do I need to say what happens when everyone raises their products’ prices before everyone else thinking they’re outsmarting anyone? If the government has any control whatsoever on price changes, this won’t be drastic, though, so not to worry, you’ll just need a couple of non liberal measures and everything shall be fine.
(Do I need to say it’s never that simple but that things are actually quite a bit like what I said, only more complex if you’re willing to go in depth and analyze specific cases? )
Well, I think it should be raised. I assume we’re talking about America? Well, from my experiences there, the minimum wage is appallingly low over there. When I went over there, my host mother was NOT on the minimum wage, but earnt only about $6.50 an hour. I earn over three times that much here in Australia in a job that requires no skills - and even when you take the exchange rate into consideration, I still earn more than twice what she got.
Not to mention the low minimum wages in America lead to that nasty tipping phenomenon. I REALLY hate tipping - I would much rather pay a higher price for things up front. If you don’t have enough money for a tip, people become really rude and horrible towards you, and from a traveller’s perspective, it’s very hard to get used to figuring out the extra 10% or so. I like the restaurants that include the service charge in their bill and don’t expect anything else from the customers - it makes for a friendlier atmosphere overall, and the staff still get paid more than the minimum.
There isnt the big choicen minimum wage, tough it is a “tariff” (dunno what it translates too) that the workers organisations negotiate trough that coontains a minimum wage. It differs from job to job, and every worker with that orgnaisation, should have that minimum.
And that is in most cases much higher than those dollars per hour
One thing those wages tells us is : what do we want ? Rich anf poor people or more evened out ?
To me its better to have it a bit more evened out.
I think it’s wonderful that the minimum wage is increasing, and terrible that it’s so low.
Here in the UK we have a minimum wage of (I think) £5.35 per hour (about $10), and we have very low unemployment. In fact unemployment is lower than before the minimum wage came in (I’m not saying that a minimum wage increases employment, just that there hasn’t been any correlation).
I still think that our wage is too low.
It wouldn’t make sense for businesses to cut down on hours or lay people off IMO. If the company works for less manhours, they produce less, and so get less money.
There has been a huge history in the world of the exploitation of ordinary workers. If one company pays $1.00 an hour for an unskilled job then there isn’t much reason (unless they have morals of course, but many many companies don’t) for another company to pay any more.
Imagine a family who’s parents both earn such a tiny wage. Both parents have to work full time to get enough money. There’s no-one left to look after the children, social problems are caused.
The children can’t afford to have many toys, clothes e.t.c. Might be bullied for state of clothes e.t.c. lots of mental problems caused.
When the children get to school leaving age the family can’t afford to put them through university, unless they’re lucky they get another poorly paid job. The cycle starts again.
I think just for an experiment that you should try living on
$125 dollars for one week. Just to see how it goes.
I think it’s great that minimum wage is going up for you guys. It’s been rising here in Canada gradually over the past few years. It’s going to go up to $8.00 in February (still too low but not as bad as it was)…and like I said it’s been rising for the past couple years, and our economy is doing just fine. Besides, it’s not minimum wage that I’d be worried about, there are much bigger problems that are effecting the American economy, National debt and consumer debt to name two.