Posted on 12/20/2013 1:00:37 PM PST by MosesKnows
The way to get higher pay is to increase your value to the job market. Every employee must bring more to the company than they take in pay and benefits. This is a requirement a company must meet to operate at a profit. The worker who wants higher pay and is willing to work for it must become more valuable to the company. He must become more of an asset or less of a liability.
One way to become more valuable is to learn or improve in a trade or profession. Government controlled centrally planned wage controls work against achieving or improving a job skill.
The job at stake may seem inconsequential or even unnecessary but that job is the exact reason to let the market planned system work by not imposing centrally planned government controlled wages.
In this example that one simple meaningless unnecessary job is at a small company. The small company is trying to remain competitive and profitable so they can grow. More profit results in more jobs.
Some of the higher skilled workers’ time expended on smaller task could be reduced by hiring a no or low skilled worker for those tasks. More of the higher skilled workers time could be devoted to producing higher profits for the company. If this new employee is affordable, several good things happen. First, the business has an opportunity to increase profits and the new low skilled hire has an opportunity to learn a trade or occupation. However, if that employee is too costly to hire both opportunities are lost.
A company should be able to have someone come in to sweep the floors, empty, the trash, and get the coffee for zero> pay in exchange for the experience. Substitute $1, $2, $3 … per hour for zero if you like but each increase will decrease the number of jobs created.
Get the failed centrally planned government controlled system out of the way and allow the market planned systems work.
A company should be able to have someone come in to sweep the floors, empty, the trash, and get the coffee for zero pay in exchange for the experience. Substitute $1, $2, $3 … per hour for zero if you like but each increase will decrease the number of jobs created.
I don’t have a problem with a minimum wage per se. I have a problem with having a minimum wage of $7/hr but then allowing products from China where the wages are $0.17/hr to compete against us.
That’s a recipe for off-shoring. Raise the import tariffs enough to offset the effects of minimum wage and taxes. Eliminate the incentives to off-shore.
No.
Capital create jobs. Private capital.
The last year that the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate was the year before the first federal minimum wage law was passed.
Minimum Wage Madness, by Thomas Sowell
"In the United States, the last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate — 1930 — was also the last year when there was no federal minimum wage law. Inflation in the 1940s raised the pay of even unskilled workers above the minimum wage set in 1938. Economically, it was the same as if there were no minimum wage law by the late 1940s.
"In 1948 the unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. This was a fraction of what it would become in even the most prosperous years from 1958 on, as the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation."
We already have that system in place, it is called internship. But one problem with your idea is that even if an infinite number of jobs are created that pay nothing, you gain nothing.
Yes. It creates jobs at the unemployment and welfare offices to accommodate the increased demand.
No, it kills jobs.
Minimum wage is a dollar figure someone will get for working at a place that pays minimum wage.
Every word and thought process that follows that headline is at best, misplaced.
Minimum wage creates minimum jobs.
There are two very nice young black men working at Gold’s Gym. They both like to work out and they get to do that free as employees. I’m fairly certain they’re minimum wage employees. They just walk around cleaning things all day. No skills whatsoever. I’ve spoken at length with both of them. They’re both in their thirties, have zero ambition and have never held another job. Seriously. Let’s suppose that Gold’s had to pay them $15/hour instead of (I think) $7.80. I’m certain that at least one or possibly both would be let go. I know the manager and he’d give each of the remaining employees a rag with instructions to wipe as they walk.
This is a small town and gym membership is cheap as dirt; $9.90/month. In Tampa it’s $35/month. (But according to the people in Tampa much of it is paid by insurance, which explains the high price.)
Right now, the employees get to make extra money by being personal trainers. They work in the gym at (probably) minimum wage, but get to solicit personal training gigs that can pay much more. If the gym had to pay $15/hour how many of these guys would be given the chance to work there? Many fewer, I’d guess. And, us locals would end up paying more for membership. At $35/month, I’d quit.
There’s a point for all businesses where costs exceed what the market will bear. At that point, they go out of business.
“Every employee must bring more to the company than they take in pay and benefits.”
This isn’t true. A company must eventually take in more than it spends (on balance), but there are many ways to stay in business despite losing money, a la Twitter, Amazon.com, etc. A company can take on more debt or rely on government intervention to survive. Plus, some employees might make a company many times what they earn, helping pay for less productive employees. In the real world, large corporations can easily hide entire departments of employees that lose money, and the companies can still be quite profitable on balance.
It’s time for a national conversation on the minimum wage.
Why, for instance, is there any minimum wage whatsoever?
Bingo! Right on target. Give the man a Quepee doll!
Higher minimum wage creates more government bureaucracy jobs in welfare and unemployment.
We know that all of these jobs are unionized bureaucrats who tend to vote Democrat.
QED
“That’s a recipe for off-shoring. Raise the import tariffs enough to offset the effects of minimum wage and taxes. Eliminate the incentives to off-shore.”
As a signatory to the GATT our government cannot raise tariffs. If we do, we’ll be taken to a foreign court. If we lose than it gives our trading partners carte blanche to put tariffs on whatever they wish. The companies thus losing business will squeal and force the government to eliminate the tariffs. That’s why Bush cancelled the tariff on steel. It’s embarrassing and humiliating for our government as we’ve signed away our sovereignty. This, by the way, is probably how the UN small arms treaty would be enforced. Moe’s gun shop sold a gun traced to a murder in Wales. They sue and we lose. Then, if the country doesn’t prevent gun sales to the public our trading partners will get to put tariffs on everything we make. Democrats will shrug their shoulders and say, “hey, this isn’t us doing it.” For globalists this is a win no matter what.
Increasing it..I meant to say. Where is my post? I wanted to edit it. It’s gone???
No, it prevents them.
>>A company should be able to have someone come in to sweep the floors, empty, the trash, and get the coffee for zero> pay in exchange for the experience.
Companies don’t hire people based on experience like that. This isn’t 1930! They want specific skills so the new hire can “hit the ground running”. They insist on credentials, diplomas, degrees. And, most of all, they want DIVERSITY so they can put some extra check marks on their EEOC report to the shareholders.
And when they get all that stuff, they tell you that you aren’t special and only deserve the bare minimum to keep you coming back.
The problem with letting the market work is that the corporations have outsourced so much of the work already. The work they keep domestic has been doubled and tripled up on the remaining employees in the name of efficiency and productivity. So, 25% of the nation is out of work and now the employers say, “There’s a dozen applicants for your job. So you work for what I’m willing to pay.”
Even when they try to hire and can’t find a single fully-qualified applicant (but get plenty of unqualified applicants), they still tell the employees they have that they can be replaced at the drop of a hat.
Central planning is not the answer. But, a “free” market that allows an employer to increase a worker’s workload without additional compensation is not the answer either. We need morals and ethics that extend beyond the bottom line.
I don’t buy junk food or other junk from junk retail stores or use much of any other services.
We export less than half the $ value that we import.
So I don’t really care if exporters scream.
But we do need to get out of the GATT if it prevents us from raising tariffs. Or we need to put in provisions that allow us to raise tariffs if our unemployment is high.
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