Posted on 01/04/2014 5:20:41 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Speaking on Fox News recently, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer proposed what, to many, might have sounded like a rather novel compromise on the minimum wage. His idea? We should have two of them, a higher minimum for "breadwinners," and a lower minimum for everybody else.
Here was Krauthammer's thinking, paraphrased. It might be hard to feed a whole household on $7.25 an hour. But raising the minimum is most likely to hurt teenagers and minorities who rely on low-paid, entry-level jobs to get a foothold in the working world. So how do you lend a hand to hard-pressed families without penalizing the young? Force employers to pay the "breadwinners" more, and everybody else less.
He called his two-tiered solution "a reasonable answer that Republicans and conservatives could offer."
Already, Krauthammer has gotten a bit of pushback. "Proponents and skeptics of a higher minimum wage can agree that Krauthammer is wrong about this," Slate's Matt Yglesias quipped on Twitter. The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein argued that figuring out who qualified as a "breadwinner" and making sure employers paid them appropriately would be a regulatory headache. But more importantly, he says:
...the economic effects would be most detrimental for those Krauthammer's proposal is intended to help. Under Krauthammer's idea, businesses who want to avoid paying the higher minimum wage on breadwinners have an easy solution: Shift toward hiring more teenagers or other nonbreadwinners.
Klein is right that that whole "breadwinner" concept would probably be more trouble than it would be worth. But what if we tweaked the idea just a little bit, and based the minimum wage on something more straightforward, like a worker's age?
We wouldn't be the first country to try it....
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
“...to each according to his needs.”
???
Like a giant union eh?
No one will hire unskilled older workers. This policy would rival obamacare as the dumbest domestic policy in the last 50 years.
Ok, where’s that Captain Picard “facepalm” pict?
“No one will hire unskilled older workers.”
It seems nowadays that companies don’t want to hire SKILLED older workers; they accept the poor performance/lack of skills of younger workers in exchange for paying lower wages. Companies don’t want to pay a “living wage”, and will sacrifice quality to avoid it. Why pay someone who has a family and housing costs when you can pay someone living with their parents who only has to pay for a monthly tattoo or piercing?
Importing economic concepts from socialist countries just really works so well...NOT!!!
The minimum wage is not supposed to be adequate to raise a family. The concept is ridiculous.
My hubby always worked two jobs when the kids were little.
You want to raise a family someday? Stay in school...get an education and pursue a dream...."the pursuit of happiness" is YOUR responsibility.
Age adjusting the minimum wage admits that it’s hurtful to young people. Well, if it’s hurtful to one group it’s hurtful to all groups. This is also why I always vote against tax exemptions for various groups. If the tax is hurtful to one group, it’s hurtful to all groups only more so now that some constituency is immune.
Age adjusting only means that older people won’t get hired in minimum wage jobs.
Any chance to reverse course in the US stops with ending the invasion of the US.
“a higher minimum for “breadwinners,” and a lower minimum for everybody else...”
Fail from Krauthammer. I worked every bit as hard as anyone else at McD. I wasn’t a breadwinner yet. I was becoming one.
Idea brought to us by Walter Mondale’s speechwriter. He gets a free pass on being a RINO because of his disability.
IIRC, Krauthammer is a former speech writer for Walter Mondale, and he's reverting to form. I wouldn't say that this is "as dumb" an idea as Obamacare, which effects 100% of the population in all 57 states.
But it pretty much guarantees that low skilled workers above the cutoff age won't even be able to find employment as greeters at WalMart. Like many problems, the simple "solutions" will make the problem even worse, and the real solution is very difficult and will take years to accomplish.
Yeah, age doesn’t magically change your productivity. Either you are worth your wage (or higher) or you are not. The government stepping in just distorts the facts of the matter by placing a floor.
Of course this would mean that any unskilled older people would be shut out of getting into the market.
If you are a older person with no skills then you have wasted your life.
yeah, let’s go ahead with more laws about stuff. It surely will help.
I disagree. The USA is all about measuring productivity....except for government workers.
This policy is the definition of Age Discrimination.Can anyone see Ginsberg, etc. upholding this policy?
Charlie just through this idea to the crowd to chomp on. He knows it won’t happen.
There is no difference between flipping a hamburger and digging a hole......the thought process is the same for it does not require thinking.
The more difficult the job, both physically and/or mentally, the higher the pay.
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