The marketplace determines the minimum wage. When govt intervenes it causes problems.
About 2 years ago, D.C. passed a law raising minimum wage to $18 if I recall correctly. Walmart responded by shutting down 2 superwalmarts and a few neighborhood stores. They only left one store in the city.
And San Francisco did the same thing 2,3 years ago in the restaurant industry. Dozens of restaurants shut down because they could not afford to pay all their employees the higher wages, especially waitresses. So, many of them went out of business. Many , many people lost their jobs. The ones that stayed in business made more money, because there was less competition. But not enough to hire the ones that were laid off. A few made more money at the expense of the few.
Government needs to stay out of private enterprise.
@NativePortlander1970 yet it wasn't based on the people! Aristocrats fighting aristocrats! The aristocrats refuse to give the people even a slight chance!
@DeWayfarerWe the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
@DallasCowboysFan I’ll check it out, ty. We probably have much in common with most of our views, honestly. May just have to agree to disagree on this one.
@DallasCowboysFan That depends on the restaurant. We used to know a German guy who was a server at a German restaurant (apparently, when German tourists visit the US, they want to eat in German restaurants). He easily made $400 a night in tips. Your average server at Waffle House doesn't make anything close to that. By law, the tips have to bring the server up to $7.25 per hour, and if they don't, their employer is only responsible for making sure they get at least that much.
Of course the hourly pay goes up hours go down and the cost of living goes up. It's funny seeing these memes about how 18-20 dollars an hour is the new 7.50 the problem is usually irresponsible spending and commitments
@DallasCowboysFan no it was a bigger town but not a city it was a Walmart distribution center where I was making 36 and most weeks I was lucky to see 15 hours lol
@SW-User WM pays $36 at the distro center? They only pay 15 at the stores.... and I don't think it is much better at the distro center in Dallas But at least you don't have to deal with the public
SW-User
@DallasCowboysFan not dealing with the public was nice but it wasn't a good job and they only paid that much as a bait to draw people in. They hire you and you get good hours your first month and then go to 6 hour shifts 2 days a week
@Rolexeo wouldn't matter if you made $50/hr, market would just inflate to offset the difference... and the margin usually widens even more.
20 years ago when min wage was $8.25, you could buy a car for 20-40k, a house for 300-400k; min wage goes up and now a car costs 50k+, and a house 700k+
Raising minimum wage does nothing. Things cost more when raised,people above minimum make more too so in effect you're just adding zeros to everything and not making any actual advances in money. Plus business' just eliminate jobs and people to keep their profits.
@Applepiedom Wrong. It's been repeatedly debunked that raising minimum wage does nothing. It raises prices slightly but not at the same rate or amount as the wage increase. So society as a whole is better off with them
See, that’s why people are selling their coochie. I wish people would understand this. Because even at $15 an hour, you still can’t survive just on that.
"Companies will simply limit their workforce by necessity. When Governor Gavin Newsom approved raising California’s minimum wage to $20 under Bill 1228, countless people found themselves without a job. Pizza Hut fired over 2,000 delivery drivers right before the change was implemented. California Pizza Hut and PacPizza franchises eliminated delivery driver positions entirely."
@DallasCowboysFan the market will self correct. Companies still need workers and people to buy their goods. It will definitely cause some market disruption and makes things uncomfortable for workers, companies, and consumers in the short term. But none of that is an excuse to continue to exploit the worker as a form of legislated corporate welfare at the workers expense.
Minimum wage in Massachusetts is 15 dollars, The federal governmenr can't makes states pay 7.25 and that guy was a secretary of labor? He's a propaganda minister now
@JustGoneNow economies are different in different states a 15 dollar minimum wage in One state is not needed in another, there are states where a house costs 100 thousand and states where they cost 400 thousand, A person living in Nebraska lives on way less than Massachusetts. The United States is a republic, the States run their own economies. ♥️
Twenty states still pay a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour
Overall, the legal pay floor in the US hasn't budged since 2009. It's the longest period without a countrywide increase since the federal minimum wage was established in 1938.Nov 11, 2023
Nah... We have "London Wage" and "Outside London Wage" Yeah... it was easier to just give Londoners a pay rise than it was to just tackle the price gouging of the tourists that makes even a cheap keyring or fridge magnet cost between £5 and £10 in London.
@ViciDraco that's it. The problem is minimum wage laws aren't aggressive enough with stop gaps that unsure the wage increase comes at the top raking in obscene amounts of money. How many times do we here the economy is down but these companies are recording record profits? Those two things shouldn't exist together. Just like the insane idea that every year the profits at the top need to be or should more than what was made last year. Like if a company took in a billion dollars last it is failure if it ONLY takes in a billion dollars this year.
We need laws that cap the maximum amount of wages at the top CEO and investor level in relation to the lowest earning worker for the same business
@MethDozer It is hard to get people to understand how it all works because poor people work on absolute numbers and rich people work on percentages.
A hypothetical business makes hamburgers that they sell for ten dollars and it costs them one dollar to make it. If paying employees more would cause the cost to make the hamburger rise to two dollars, most of us working class folks would expect the business to pass that cost on to us and charge eleven dollars. But rich people don't work that way. They have been making 10X return on those hamburgers. So they would now charge twenty dollars and consider it breaking even. Because they weren't thinking about nine dollars in profit. They were thinking about a thousand percent return.
I would definitely be in favor of maximum wages being calculated by some combination of lowest wage, median wage, and mean wage in a business. That way you have to look at pay scales through the entire company. But that would also necessitate cracking down on businesses employing 'independent contractors' and then not considering them employees as well.
@ViciDraco Yep. The return on investment expected by the owner and investor class is insane and absurd. They expect these unreasonable returns ever since Friedman and Reagan style economics destroyed the middle class that none of us peons could ever hope to see on anything we invest in despite the lower classes typically choosing to invest in more useful things.
@LeopoldBloom I'll give you a very recent example of a noticable price increase. When I moved to my current apartment I bought a small low to the ground flat cart to help me move my things, I now currently use it along with a 20 gallon tote for groceries and laundry, in April 2020 it cost $30.99, the other day I was at Walmart to pick up a few things and saw it was now being sold for $51.46. In April 2020 my monthly supplies cost around $75.00, the very same items I get each and every month now cost over $140.00, that is not nefligible, that is significant.
@NativePortlander1970 Those increases are due to inflation, not a higher minimum wage. So I'll clarify, the effect of increases in the minimum wage on the cost of products is negligible compared to other effects.
@LeopoldBloom Bullshit, those increases were due to Walmart, McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, Target, etc., having to raise wages to keep employees during the plandemic. We lost FIVE casual restaurants in this small city of 27,000 where I currently live because they lost patrons due to their increased costs due to raised wages
