Posted on 07/23/2009 5:04:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
The federal government is trying to strengthen the U.S. auto industry. So here's a great idea for what it can do: Tell the Big Three to raise their prices across the board.
That would help in some obvious ways. Higher prices would mean bigger profit margins on every sale. Bigger profits would mean more jobs. More jobs would mean more workers buying new American cars.
But anyone can see that raising prices wouldn't work, because it would dry up sales. If American consumers were willing to pay more for American cars, dealers would already be charging higher prices. This is such an obviously boneheaded idea that no one would ever dream of doing it.
But in the realm of employee compensation, the federal government is taking that absurd notion and putting it into law. Come Friday, the federally mandated minimum wage will jump from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 -- an 11 percent increase. At a time when employers are laying off workers, Washington is going to make it more expensive to keep them.
If you're a minimum wage employee, your job will pay more, but only if it still exists. These days, most companies are scrutinizing every position on the payroll to make sure it's worth the cost. Raise the toll, and some employees will find they are no longer valuable enough to make the cut.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
If the employees in question “who wont make the cut” are the legions of administrators, auditors, contractors, consultants, legal experts, diversity regulators, health and safety reps, community organisers and empty suited time-serving managers that infest the senior ranks of most organisations, then an 11% raise in the minimum wage would be a grand idea, stimulating retail spending on basics and helping lift the economy out of recession.
Unfortunately, the job cuts are almost always at the “sharp end”, so this isn’t a good plan.
I don’t support the minimum wage concept, never have, never expect to. Having said that let me add that I firmly believe that the REAL problem is not the minimum wage increase, the real problem is the massive amount of federal interference in business that raises costs to the point that there is no money left to pay employees. If you look at what $7.25 an hour will buy it is miniscule. We have had higher minimum wages in real terms in the past but we didn’t have all the other costs of business that the feds keep loading on. If this continues there won’t be any businesses left to pay any kind of wages at all.
The mandates of the minimum wage laws are quite simple to avoid. Simply put, HIRE NO ONE ELSE. There, fixed. Thousands may be laid off, but worse, hundreds of thousands will NEVER be hired. High school and college students will be unable to find that “summer job”, prodding the government to step in with its next nightmare program.
For those who have jobs, hours are cut back, and with it total income.
None are so blind that they refuse to see what is before their eyes.
A std min wage for the whole country is stupid. $7.25 is much more in Desmoines IA than it is in Northern VA. You might be able to actually survive on 7.25 in Desmoines.....
I made min wage when I first started working when I was a kid. It was around $5 at the time and barely covered my food expenses, car insurance, and gas costs. That said, as an adult if someone is making just the min wage, they need to set some time aside for some serious self reflection.
It should be scaled by region.
No, there should not be such an abomination as a government mandated minimum wage. It’s not the government’s business what I choose to pay my employees. If I am not paying a wage that is equitable, the employees are free to seek employment elsewhere, and there will not be anyone wanting to work for me.
What are called “minimum wage jobs” nowadays are what we USED to call “entry level” jobs, where young students learned how hard work could be if you were stupid enough to quit learning.
Now everyone is “entitled” to a nice job, along with their self-esteem classes...
Are you going to scale the price of a car, of a gallon of gas, or a loaf of bread as well? How about the price of gold and silver?
Why should one person's hour's work be worth less than someone doing the same job somewhere else under otherwise identical conditions?
Government scaling of wages by region will just create regional third-world economies within the US.
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