Raising the minimum wage due to income inequality

Does a fulltime minimum wage job today pay enough to get you out of it? Also, working fulltime and trying to get an education as well. That is asking a lot.

Your assertion that the average McDonald’s worker is a young adult is woefully out of date, my friend.

“First of all, only about 30 percent of fast-food workers are teenagers. Another 30 percent are between the ages of 20 and 24. The remaining 40 percent are 25 and older. (All the data we present here are from the government’s Current Population Survey, where we have combined data for the years 2010 through 2012 in order to provide a large enough sample for analysis.) Half of fast-food workers are 23 or older. Many teenagers do work in fast-food, but the majority of fast-food workers are not teenagers.”

http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/slow-progress-for-fast-food-workers

How do you propose someone making minimum wage and raising a family is going to find the time to “get something better”? That’s the biggest issue here. When you're barely getting by paycheque to paycheque, there isn’t enough time nor money to invest in acquiring better skills.

Why shouldn’t it be someone’s goal to flip burgers at McDonald’s? A job is a job. Judging people for doing jobs that need to be done is gross.

So it should have a living wage, or it shouldn't? You sort of danced around that question in order to proclaim that their aspirations should be higher. Though you did not actually explain why they should be higher.

USPTO killed OP's parents

Whether or not a full time minimum wage job can help you eventually get out of it may depend more on where you live than anything else. Minimum wage won't take you nearly as far in San Francisco than it would in San Antonio.

As for working full time and attending school, it's possible. I earned six semester hours a semester while I was in Iraq, and there were days I saw the sun go up, come down, and go back up again without sleeping in between. Also, if you make minimum wage, then you probably qualify for a Pell Grant unless you have a felony drug conviction.

If I'm wrong about the average age of a McDonald's worker, then I stand corrected. However, that doesn't change my stance that it shouldn't be an adult's goal to not do any better than fast food and expect the government to force their company to pay them $15 an hour or more when some people that have degrees aren't even making that much.If their goal is to do nothing better than flip burgers, then they shouldn't expect to get paid more than the average person that flips burgers. A person that has a goal to sit on their couch and watch TV all day shouldn't be surprised if their monthly income matches their work effort. That statement isn't a reflection of a person's worth, it is an opinion on their desire to make more money.

Like I told @horgen, I found time to take online classes in Iraq and there were times I didn't have a day off for weeks, if not months depending upon current operations. Not to mention times we lost internet and I had to repeatedly ask for extensions when we got our internet back. I had to hope that the teachers weren't assuming that I was making up excuses so I wouldn't be docked points for being late. One of the reasons I joined the military was to get money for college, but I know that not everyone is either able or willing to serve. For the ones unable or unwilling to serve, chances are they would qualify for grants for school anyway if they are stuck in a minimum wage job.

Four years of college isn't required for a well-paying job, you can learn a trade such as plumbing or get a CDL and make more money than people that actually put themselves in almost six figures of debt for a degree that barely got them a position sitting at a reception desk for less than $15 an hour. Also, if you are good with computers, there are CompTIA prep classes that can help you get you certifications that will start you out at over $40,000 a year. If you can qualify for and get cleared for a Top Secret Clearance, you can at almost double that if you are willing to work for Uncle Sam at a three letter agency. If you are willing to sit in a place like Kuwait for a year, you could possible get six figures just for fixing computers on military bases.

While some people may not find what I am about to say as popular, I don't believe that a person should willingly start a family (children, not a spouse if both are working/in school) if they are not financially prepared to support them. Accidents do happen, which is why people need to practice safe sex even if it isn't 100% reliable, but if you are intentionally having children while you are barely out of high school (or possibly still in high school), then shame on you.

I don't think it's at all absurd for someone who works at McDonald's to earn a living wage, and you seem to be neglecting to mention your views on that. I also resent comparing someone who works at a fast food establishment and someone who watches TV on their couch all day. Have you worked at a fast food place before? It is hard work with long hours. I'd say that requires quite a bit of work effort even if it is unskilled labour. Corporate America and the Neoliberals have fooled the populace into thinking higher pay = high effort, which is not the case at all. Some very difficult, labour-intensive jobs can pay minimum wage. The amount of effort one exudes at their job isn't at all tied to the pay.

Your story is a pleasant anecdote and I congratulate you for your hard work, but I urge you to not apply your experiences as doable for the average person. Not everyone may have had the same leg up you have had or the same support system. There are a lot of variables out there and the reality is some people have just been dealt a shit hand in life that for whatever reason prevent them from ascending to a higher tax bracket. Even in your post, all of your suggestions have an "if" qualifier to them. In reality, doing all those things is a lot more complex.

There is always going to be a finite amount of jobs out there and in any economy there are a winners or losers. It's in the government's interest to help the losers since that in turn helps stimulate the economy.

It's a little humorous to me that we spent 60 years fighting for decent wages and rights, and we seem destined to spend another 60 saying, "If we earn more, prices will just rise."

No, it isn't absurd for someone that works at McDonald's to earn a livable wage. However, that doesn't mean that they should feel entitled to make as much as someone that is harder to replace in their line of work, and if they stick to fast food, they shouldn't be surprised if their pay sucks until they put on a manager's shirt (even then, it may not be much more per hour). When I was two months shy of 17, it took all of a few minutes for another teenager a few weeks younger than me to show me how to make a Big Mac, an Arch Deluxe (you won't find too many people that remember that burger), and several other burgers available at the time when I started working at McDonald's. $5.20 an hour and two free meals a shift (later cut to one) sounded pretty good at the time for that and I even remember what some of my first paychecks went to. The first one paid for Goldeneye 007 for N64 a few weeks after it came out, I got Resident Evil 2 for the PS1 the day it was released, and the rest went to help pay bills when my mom fell short.

I was happy with the money I got, but I didn't pretend it was supposed to be enough to survive on, considering how little effort it took to learn my job. Don't get me wrong, it was hard work sometimes, especially when someone decided to blow up the bathroom, but I was easily replaceable. You shouldn't confuse hard work with being hard to replace. As someone in IT with several certifications, someone performing help desk operations can literally work from home unless something physical breaks and they need to drive there to fix it. Despite their lack of physical labor, their training and certifications makes them a lot harder to replace than that McDonald's cook that was trained within an hour of clocking in for the first time. Pay is based more on how hard you are to replace, not how much you sweat doing your job.

The couch comment was poorly typed. I was not saying that fast food workers are no better than people that stay home on their couch, I was trying to say that if someone is on their couch doing nothing, then they shouldn't be surprised if they get nothing deposited in their account on payday as a result. Obviously, that comment isn't meant to apply to someone that is on their couch because they are physically unable to work and are collecting disability as a result. I know that some people get screwed over, but that isn't true with everyone.

It really is fascinating watching people vacillate on such a basic principle.

@ad1x2: People once demanded, and won, livable wages for monotous and repetitive assembly line work.

I've never seen anyone who holds the belief that "Fast food jobs are just for kids" ever admit that 40% are working adults when presented with data and evidence.

Indeed, it was what helped give rise to the middle class in our country.

@ad1x2: I fully agree with you, people need to improve themselves through hard work, determination and perseverance. I am constantly trying to do so, and you know what? Even though it's hard, I enjoy the challenges. Unfortunately, not all people get the same upbringing. Some groups of people have been stereotyped their whole life, judged and deemed trash. They aren't able to rise up because society threw them in the gutter. I'm not just talking about different races either. I guess it's the way society works, you need poor people in order for there to be a middle class. And you need a middle class for the rich to feed off of and prosper. It's similar to those heirarchy charts in the plant animal kingdom with plants being on the bottom and the Apex predators being on the top.

The only difference between the animal kingdom and human society is the way government tilts the scales and gives away socialist commie benefits to the rich. Things that shouldn't exist in a free market but do because of the crappy laws they passed. There will always be poor, middle class and rich. We live in a planet of scarcity, and that drives demand. But government interference has tilted the scales significantly. Government has intentionally reduced the competition at the top between the businesses and corporations with all their commie laws. There needs to be market balance to counter that and one of the ways that is done is through minimum wage increases.

This type of statement always bothers me. There really was nothing in his anecdote that isn't doable for the average person. Disabled people can't join the military, but the average American certainly can. The reality is that there isn't anything complex at all about learning a trade and making a living wage. You just have to evaluate your options, put together a plan, and execute it. Student loans are easy to get and trade school is much cheaper than a 4 year university. All it takes is a tiny amount of ambition.

@PurpleMan5000: This assumes you’re not already raising a family, which is a sizable portion of workers at fast food places. To people with mouths to feed it isn’t doable unless a spouse makes enough money to support everyone while the other is out improving their skills. Joining the military while raising a family isn’t as easy as you make it seem.

Liberals don't realize that when you raise the minimum wage that the things like housing sharply increase. Look at California for example; San Francisco has one of the highest minimum wages in the United States and it is also one of the most expensive places to live. You aren't suppose to raise a family on a wage from McDonald's... get a real degree (not art, liberal sciences, etc.) and the money will come.

Income inequality is one of the dumbest issues that liberals have ever pressed. Liberals suggest that if 3 people are in a room and one person has $20 and the rest of $5 that somehow the person with $20 cheated or stole money from the other people- this is complete nonsense. People like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates didn't become rich from stealing money from the poor, they become rich by participating in a very large amount of consensual business transactions.

The average fast food worker only gets to work about 25 hours per week. That's a big part of why their overall wages are not livable, but it also provides plenty of opportunity to be a part time student while continuing to work in fast food. It's doable, even with a family. A family would certainly make it a lot more stressful, though.

I support raising the minimum wage, but there really is nobody working in fast food other than maybe the manager that I wouldn't strongly encourage to find something better. Regardless of what the minimum wage is, that sort of job will always pay less than skilled labor.

So minimum wage should not even rise equal to inflation?

And today it seems more and more that some choices of full time work should not be paid enough to be considered a livable wage. Do people expect good service then if that is the case? Should even those jobs exist?

I assure you, anyone who is only working minimum wage at 25 hours at one job absolutely has at least one or two other jobs. Again, it's not as easy as you're making it seem lol.

Again, you aren't suppose to raise a family on a fast food wage.

I don't really think that they should honestly. It only supports corporate welfare to have jobs that pay so little that people can't get by on their own labor.

@horgen: "Should even those jobs exist?"

Fantastic question. I'd argue, "No." Those jobs certainly won't exist long term in anything resembling their current scale.

But atm they do, and have for a long time. As long as it is required, it should pay a livable wage.

@horgen: I agree. Based on your question I'd assumed you had a slightly longer timeframe in mind.

It's a general attitude towards them, and that they will most likely last another 10 years or more.

@mighty-lu-bu: of course they cheated. You dumass conjobs don't seem to understand who your daddy is. Because the rich didn't just get rich out of thin air. The government was there the whole time and they we're both sucking each other off.

When I can open my own McDonald's without paying a dime to the commie rent collector, or worry about getting shot by a commie stooge then I will agree with you. Until then, you and your fellow con jobs are just smoking the dope

Do you even know how bill gates became the richest man in the world? He stole code from Xerox, and so did apple. Xerox didn't bother copy right or patenting their work. So both gates and jobs stole the code re packaged it, improved on it and copy righted it. Government protected them.

That’s why Xerox is synonymous with copying to this day.

@PurpleMan5000: these conjobs like bu lu are naive and cute. They even have their maga hats, marching around like sheep. For all their BS about wanting small government and free market, they don't know the first thing about it. In fact they are the ones who want government protections, not the liberals.

I agree with him that people should not stay in fast food jobs their entire life. They need to aspire to something better. So giving them a wage increase is definitely against my own principles. That is, it would be against my principles if this were a real free market without commie government interference at every single level. Unfortunately that's not the case, and for that reason alone I have no problem with minimum wage increases across the board.

Exactly. Before I went back to school I was working close to forty hours and barely had enough to cover rent and utilities, don't even start to think about having money to spend on myself. And then people want to start talking about "oh, you should just learn a trade, it's easy!" Uh, no. When your budget for luxury expenses is zero then the amount of money you can put aside towards school is zero. Student loans are not always easy to get, especially if it's your second time around, and even assuming you can get aid that covers 100% of your schooling, which is doubtful, you still have to work a full-time job AND go to school, probably full-time because that's usually a requirement of the loans. Show me someone who's working and going to school full-time and I'll show you someone on the verge of a breakdown. That whole attitude is just insane to me, that we're going to people who are already busting their ****ing asses trying to get by and saying "oh, it's really just your fault that you are where you are, if you worked harder you'd be doing better." Not to even mention that they're paying for their own job training, basically providing a service for the companies that need their skills, just so that they can be taken advantage of at the next level when someone who makes more than them pays them less than what they're worth.

Which brings me to my next point, is that this isn't about people with fewer skills earning less. No one here is debating that someone with a college degree should earn more than someone with a high school diploma. The issue is how much less, and when the answer is so much less that they have to struggle to get by while the companies they work for extract millions or billions in profit from them, then there is a problem. If it were a mom and pop store that struggled to stay in the black where the owners only took home a bit more than their employees I'd be more sympathetic to the argument, but we're talking about international, multi-billion dollar corporations here. The idea that the executives can't take a pay cut to pay their employees a livable wage is ridiculous. That is not saying people should earn less because they're less skilled, that is saying that when you're less skilled you're so worthless that you should be living in poverty and struggling to get by. This isn't about being skilled or unskilled, this is about getting a fair share of the profits that workers help create. And guess what? To the argument that these workers should be going to college or a trade school while they're working, it's been proven that higher wages and more flexibility make that more achievable for workers. If you want them to go back to school you should pay them a higher wage.

Housing increases anyway. Back in I think it was the 80's there was a glut of housing. More supply, so there should be lower prices, right? Landlords still raised the rent, and rent prices continued to rise. Landlords almost always raise the cost of rent regardless of supply or local pay. This doesn't even get into the fact that most low-wage workers commute to work already because they can't afford to live in the areas that pay well.

And California is an entirely different story. There are plenty of factors affecting housing prices in California, not the least of which are poor development decisions and restrictive zoning laws prohibiting new construction. If California hadn't let Silicon Valley just build whatever they want wherever they wanted they wouldn't have enormous commercial centers surrounded by unaffordable housing. To attribute it to just the minimum wage is asinine.

no one should get more money except me

i earned it

you can have my money if you like, I just want to stop working.

LOL this thread.

Poor troll is really trying so let´s hope someone bites.

i'll give you 2 options: 1) get rid of commie patents, IPs, infinite trademarks, anti freemarket regulations, and all government/courts interference in the pure free market or 2) jack up the minimum wage, raise taxes on the rich along with other socialist benefits.

Those are your only 2 options, I prefer the first, its way more beneficial to me. You won't pick either, because you're a commie leech.

agree

I think there's a higher chance of goods and expenses far surpassing wages, then wages being raised to keep up with the inflation in the US.
And perhaps that would be a much needed although painful jolt if it takes half a middle class salary to buy a loaf of bread, businesses would be required to lower prices to ensure a profit..or shut down and receive zero profit.

Or they could re-evaluate executive pay and whether or not executives deserve such exorbitant salaries while their employees struggle to buy bread.

Well that would be the ideal way to do it, so we know that won't happen.

The thing about executives versus line employees is that their failures could cost their company millions and their successes could result in millions in profits. On the other hand, a line employee's failure (assuming it isn't something that causes bad publicity, such as what happened with the Starbucks manager a few weeks ago) usually doesn't even cause a blip on the big picture.

Even if we don't take that into consideration, chances are a CEO's pay wouldn't have too much effect on a line employee's pay. For example, the CEO of McDonald's made $21.8 million last year. Assuming that he was willing to take a 90% paycut and was willing to divide the money he gave up among the estimated 375,000 McDonald's employees, each employee would be looking at a whopping 1 dollar a week raise.

While companies may need to reevaluate how much of their profits they need distribute to their line employees, the amount of money they could save and redistribute to line employees based on what they cut from high-level executives isn't going to be anything more than a symbolic gesture.

Thermo Fisher Scientific CEO makes about the same. "Only" 70 000 employees. Looking at roughly 5 dollars extra a week. If the other Executives are included, that doubles to about 10$ a week. We are talking about a pay-cut for 5 people and raise for 70 000.

I have no idea how much they pay their owners.

@horgen: "I have no idea how much they pay their owners."

Right, assuming Piketty is correct, it's largely about the share of wealth/income going to capital holders increasing with time.

I don't doubt it. Hasn't the normal time to hold on to shares in a specific company gone down from years to just months?

@horgen: That appears to be true, but I am not sure how the two are related. What am I missing?

For one, not all their failures cost their company millions. Executives fail on a daily basis and it rarely shows up in the books. The problem is when their failures are colossal they can cost the company millions, which sounds like a good argument for delegating more and reducing salaries to me. Two, executives get paid even when they fail. Toys R Us just paid out 16 million dollars in executive bonuses and justified it by saying they needed to pay them that much to make the company competitive. Um, excuse me, those pricks just ran the company into the ground. You want to make comparisons to the work employees do, but there's no comparison. If my bosses catch me making a minor mistake at the store they're going to call me into the office and have a talk with me about it, if not write me up depending on what it is. Executives run a company into the ground, however, and they get bonuses. There is no accountability for executives whatsoever. When the company succeeds it's because of them, but when it fails it's somebody else's fault. The people working the day to day jobs, though, the ones you think are so inconsequential, they make a minor mistake and they never hear the end of it. If executives are as important as you say they are then they should have to earn their pay instead of acting entitled to it. Not to mention that those same executives would be sitting around playing with their minuscule dicks without people to actually do the work that generates the company's income. You say every day workers don't matter, but even mention the word "strike" and people start acting like it's the apocalypse. That tells you that employees are more valuable then you give them credit for.

That's one executive, there are plenty more executives who can take pay cuts. You can also divert funds from other areas. Plenty of companies are doing stock buybacks with their windfalls, that's money that can be invested in employees rather than thrown at shareholders. You can re-evaluate investments. Toys R Us made plenty of poor investments that could have been better used by investing in employees. Most companies that enter bankruptcy have made purchases and acquisitions that were ill-advised. Not only could investing in employees be a better investment, it could save the company from making a bad investment that could tank them down the line. You can cut back on middle management, which is often bloated and inefficient. You can offer profit sharing and performance bonuses to employees. Saying that modern employees can't make any more than they do right now is the modern "let them eat cake."

@theone86: The comparison is false anyway. Last month we had a developer cost the company 500 million dollars in an hour, lol.

So another important aspect of minimum wage, your ability to buy things (don't know the English terms XD) and bbp or in English... gdp? is that there is always a conflict between capital and labor. The money always goes to capital or labor in a company and it's important that there is a balance between how much money people can make with capital and how much they can make with labor. (Which doesn't mean that the right balance is at 50/ 50 but there is a certain ratio that works best.)

I would love to see a chart of how much money is going to capital vs. labor in the USA over time. If the balance is shifting too much in favor of capital over a long period of time, and capital becomes more valuable in the long run, you will see that the economy does well but the people don't: The rich are making money on artificially pumped up shares (companies buying their own stock to make remaining stock more valuable) instead of actually investing in improvements (buying/ selling shares quickly), wages stay low, and not much more is bought, companies are paying more to shares instead of investing in improvements which include ways to increase productivity. Things don't get cheaper, wages don't go up relative to inflation, yet the rich get richer.

Essentially in such a dangerous situation the economy does well but those who need the money most will not have an easier time of it and advancements made in efficiency and innovation are slowed down, because the money is being funneled to the people rich on capital. The only way out then is government intervention or in the case of the USA (with legal lobbying and a rightist government) raising a common awareness in the consumer and laborer about how they are getting screwed/a revolution against the stock trade/capital.

This is happening in many places in Europe so I would not be surprised if it happens in the USA. Then asking for minimum wages to go up will be impossible because of the stock trade/lack of extra revenue despite a healthy economy on paper. Something that would solve this problem is obligating share holders to hold on to shares: Set a minimum amount of time (more than half a year at least since that is the average, so maybe a year) that a shareholder needs to hold on to a share before the shareholder is allowed to sell it. I believe in the USA it is the Internal Revenue Service that is supposed to set up those rules? So get a hold of them, en masse. Like with millions at a time.

Unless someone else here has a better idea. I'm not an economist. I would need to speak to actual economists first and they are in hiding. I cannot find any who I can easily talk to in my country XD I can get you millions of people, but we need a well researched plan with fail-saves based on actual facts, documentation, expertise, that we can sell to people. We need to make it comprehensible and get economists to speak about it on public channels. Then we can enact change. Without the research and the expertise it's always going to be us pissing into the wind and arriving at the point that something needs to be done but nobody knows how or what. And then nothing gets done, because nobody has the faith that if they were to stand up that they know what they are talking about and that other people would stand up with them. We need to guarantee that they can speak up with confidence and that there will be plenty people standing up with them. The people who keep things as they are, are likely very rich. And the only way to beat the rich is in numbers.

We need someone who actually knows what they are talking about to do anything. An economic genius or two. Goldman Sachs has absolutely brilliant economists but sadly they are very rich and very much uninterested in ethics. Maybe someone who got fired for the right reasons could help.

@KungfuKitten: Look up Piketty's work.

If the rate between average time holding shares in company X and expected profit changes. Lets say that the average time is one year, and expects the investments to double in value over that time. Over time that changes to 8 months and expected investment growth is 85%. The rate between time and expected growth has changed.

This is so out of my field. I think it is called rate of return or something like that.

@horgen: Ah, got it. I don't have the data to either confirm or refute the link to a decrease in the mean time to double, but it's an interesting proposal.

I'm not very good at French but I read a synopsis of some of his works and it seems we are on one line except that he knows what he's talking about. It's a good start.