Posted on 01/05/2006 9:06:49 AM PST by NormsRevenge
As the year begins, we find Sacramento once again considering raising the minimum wage. Only this time, Governor Schwarzenegger has indicated he might support a bill raising the minimum wage to $7.25 next year, and $7.75 the year after.
In the wake of high energy costs, high building costs, high liability insurance costs, and workers’ compensation reform that doesn’t reduce costs nearly as much as we need to, we cannot afford to drive up the costs of doing business in California even higher. Even if you do not pay the minimum wage to more than a handful of employees, the inflationary impact it has on the entire salary scale can be significant.
The current federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. In California the minimum wage is $6.75 per hour. Left wing political rhetoric has succeeded in confusing the people into thinking that a ‘wage’ is an entitlement, not the price that the worker is worth in the marketplace for the job performed, the skills possessed, or the desirability of the worker to the employer. I think it is time we remind ourselves that wages are, in fact, a price paid for labor.
Everyone is familiar with the harmful economic effects of arbitrary government price controls in other aspects of the economy. Rent control results in fewer rental units. Price control on any goods results in fewer of those goods. Price control on labor results in fewer jobs.
It is an emotionally charged issue, which fails to take into account the ‘side effects’ of the law. If an employer has to pay an employee more than that employee produces for the company, the employer is losing money. So either the employee is fired, or the company goes bankrupt. Either way, the employee loses the job. This is government forced unemployment.
A forced minimum wage deprives the workplace of some lower skilled workers who would be capable of rendering beneficial services to an employer if that employee were allowed to be paid what his effort was worth, making that employee a productive member of society. The worker has been deprived of independence and self-respect which comes from self-support, even though he or she would otherwise be willing to do the work at a lower wage. Even worse, the best way to get a higher paying job is to do well at a lower paying job.
According to an analysis produced by the National Center of Policy Analysis, “The primary cause of low income, …, is no wages, not low wages.” They conclude that most of those who earn low wages are either teen-agers or other secondary earners spread rather evenly across the income distribution scale. According to a summary of their analysis, “While the single mother trying to support her child on a full-time minimum wage job is a better story, the 16-year-old hamburger-flipping student with college-educated and employed parents is a better fact.” Low-income families have a large number of people without jobs and without the skills to get a job. A mandated minimum wage forces them even further out of the job market.
Increasing the minimum wage increases the cost of goods and services, forcing many of the people who lost their jobs as a result of this government intervention to either pay higher prices, or do without. The government has deprived them of a job they could perform, and which would form the basis of further training to acquire higher wages, and has increased the price of goods that they might otherwise have been able to buy. All of this is sold to the public in the name of helping the poor. Some help!
Low-income families do not benefit from a minimum wage, and neither does the taxpayer. Once again we will consider increasing the cost to employers in California for a program that has never shown any legitimate long-term benefit to “the poor”, and that has far more often been shown to be a detriment not only to employers, but to the very “poor” the program is supposed to help. After all, you can only make the minimum wage if you have an employer who is providing a job.
Minimum wage = Full employment for Illegals
All those 'hidden' costs for employees is true, plus workman's comp. Which is a killer in CA.
Everyone here seems to be missing a key issue. Many (if not all) unions use the minimum wage as a bargaining tool. Increase the minimum wage, the unions will want higher wages too. And we have a lot of public unions going into contract negotiations soon..........
How, precisely, is one person doing something one time a "good experiment"? Her book is on par with the anti-capitalist propaganda pushed by Morgan Spurlock (who did a similar "experiment" on his TV show, rigged to fail).
All a higher (or any) minimum wage law does is encourgage disobedience to the law and lower rates of lawful employment. There are plenty of tasks that need doing that simply aren't worth x dollars per hour to do, whatever x happens to be. The real minimum wage is and always will be zero, and in every study of the policy (as mentioned in the article), minimum wage laws only serve to increase the number of those earning zero.
This tells me that your employer is paying market rates for the services you provide.
It is simply not possible to just uproot if your employer tells you he can't pay you more than X.
Why not? In the last two centuries, a lot of people uprooted themselves for an uncertain future in this country. A lot of people still do, legally and illegally.
(2) The work done by the employees is not highly valued by the market, and the employer cannot afford to pay higher-than-market wages. I have many skills that are in high demand, most importantly a brain.
"Demand" and "value" can be two different beasts. "Demand" may exist when there is high turnover in a company. If my burger flippers quit every 3 months, I will have a lot of "demand" for new employees. However, I will not pay these employees more than what I think they're worth.
I've met very very few 'lazy' poor people. Most of them work their butts off and can't ever get ahead. Our courier works three jobs, sleeps a couple hours a night, just to support his ex-wife and their two kids. I know, that's just one guy, right...
I know people like that, too. But then again, I doubt either one of us hang out in the 'lazy poor' crowd. Wasn't there a recent post on FR about poor people and their big-screen TV's?
How many people on here would actually hire a poor person to do... anything? Or would you go out and hire the GQ-looking guy with the schnazzy care and the professionally-edited resume?
I don't think the Mexican day laborers would make the cover of GQ. Nor would migrant farm workers. Yet they still come here and work.
Quite frankly, the government sticks its nose in because nobody else will.
The government sticks its nose in because people in government profit, professionally, from being busybodies, and the People let them do it.
Because most people are too stupid to come in out of the rain, let alone develop the skills necessary to earn a living or to defend themselves from evil, greedy capitalist employers who, naturally, will exploit the workers and force them into abject poverty in order to line their own pockets.
Of course the Government must set wages, prices too....Its for the children.
Projectile horse vomit.
I am very blessed and fortunate to have been born in a nice community, nice schools, etc.....I never forget that.
You bet it is!
So what if they could? Bill Gates could "afford" to give $10 to every American. Is he morally required to do so?
We will just have to agree to disagree.
That would depend on what each is charging. Which means that the poor guy gets screwed by minimum wage laws since they limit his ability to compete by offering a lower price.
Mediocre housing is 90% better than places I have lived. How about a DORM? It's like a prison cell without a toilet.
Cry me a river.
Thank you for your courteous reply.
Disagree on what? What's the difference in your claim that McDonalds should be paying its workers $X more than market wages because they can afford it, and the claim that Bill Gates should pay me $X because he can afford it?
My son rents a room in a house. He has bathroom privileges and use of the kitchen. $500/month. A full up single bedroom apartment would cost him $1200 in the same area. It's good enough to keep him fed, clothed and running up his student loans toward a June 2006 graduation date. He's gone from flipping burgers to selling real estate to being a real estate broker in 2 years. He'll have a business degree in June. That comes from working his ass off. He chose not to be a minimum wage burger flipper. Remaining poor is a choice in this country.
You cannot change the value of someone's labor by government fiat...by the stroke of the Govern-ator's pen.
Minimum wage laws are nothing more than forced redistribution of the wealth, otherwise known as, SOCIALISM.
Do I HEAR $100????
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