Β #MinimumWageDebate πΈ #LivingWage π± #SmallBusinessOwners π©βπΌπ¨βπΌ
So, my brother-in-law (BIL) thinks minimum wage should be abolished… π€ Let’s break it down:
Here’s the gist of our conversation:
– BIL believes fast food workers shouldn’t make more than minimum wage.
– He argues that minimum wage shouldn’t even exist.
Here are my thoughts on the matter:
– Minimum wage was once a living wage but hasn’t kept up with inflation.
– Living wage is now 4-10x the federal minimum wage based on cost of living.
– Without a minimum wage decree, companies would likely pay close to nothing!
BIL’s company has no employees, except for his daughter who’s paid under the table. π¬
Possible solutions to consider:
– Increase minimum wage to reflect current cost of living.
– Implement policies to prevent under-the-table payments.
– Support small businesses that pay fair wages.
What do you think about the minimum wage debate? How can we ensure fair pay for all workers? Let’s discuss! π‘ #FairWages #WorkersRights π€
so stealing from his own daughter. classy
As far as I understand, with no presence of strong labor power, a min wage is necessary to sustain at least a bare minimum. Especially when you have hundreds of people willing to accept a much lower pay that benefits no one but the employer.
And how many minimum wage jobs has the BIL worked
>but it hasn’t kept up with inflation
Why is this a problem with the wage and not a problem with the cost of everything? I mean you have land use policies in a lot of places that restrict construction and that makes housing scarce and expensive. I see that as the real problem – not the fact that the minimum wage hasn’t kept up with all the inflation that that policy creates. If you want to offset one bad policy with another then I guess that’s an option but now you’re screwing over people in the middle who lose from a higher minimum wage and also get screwed on high housing costs.
This is some libertarian nonsense that all hinges on the unspoken condition of “in a perfectly competitive market.”
However, the perfectly competitive market of Econ 101 is as real as the frictionless, inelastic world of Physics 101. Those conditions are good for understanding the absolute bare bones basics of a system. However, anyone past second semester of their studies knows how reality warps those simple equations.
There is no perfectly competitive market for labor. The reason we have labor laws like minimum wage, overtime pay, and equal opportunity employment is the same reason the SAT and ACT tests start earlier in Alaska and Hawaii than the rest of the USA and Windows and Chrome constantly get major security patches. If a loophole can be exploited, it WILL be exploited.
Your bil has no business being an employer. You shouldnβt oversee human beings if youβre not prepared to treat them with the respect you owe all human beings. Ya know, the basic kind. If youβre not willing to pay your workers enough to be alive, you have no business having them. Why should we want to support your life if it doesnβt go both ways? Β
I’d like for him to show you a single example of where that’s worked.
Then show him the hundreds of examples, throughout history, where corporations happily either owned human beings outright, or put them in indentured servitude, or paid them in “company store” money.
When you take away the floor, below which a society will not allow workers to fall, the standard becomes slavery. Because the people with the money have 100% of the power when a government isn’t protecting workers. That’s proven literally everywhere, across history.
In a pure capitalist economy, yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to work. But in this same economy, people get hurt and the powerful take advantage of the weak. In comes government regulation to make things more fair. But everyone has a different definition of fair. By regulation, I mean things like breaking up monopolies, prevent racketeering, and yes, force employers to pay a minimum wage.
No matter what the regulation, some will say unfair, but don’t worry. Soon we elect different people in the government who has another definition of fair.
It should be raisedβ¦
You should offer her a job, show him how that free-market works
Minimum wage should be $72.50 an hour?
The gulf coast has some of the highest rates of workers earning the minimum wage.
The slavery habits weren’t abolished, just reformed. Incrementally.
The only argument for no min wage is to also argue for a UBI. Make sure people’s needs are met first, then you can search for people that genuinely have a passion for flipping hamburgers for cheap.
He sounds like a fuck$&@ delight!
/s
He’s right, kind of. A minimum wage shouldn’t need to be a thing. And if we had a universal basic income, we could reasonably eliminate it.
But I doubt that’s the stance he’s attempting to take.
In a world with no wages would be slavery at this point.
Karma: Daughter goes to labor board when she turns 18, in for unpaid wages..Β
I’m actually fine with doing away with the minimum wage if it’s replaced by something better. Let’s face it, even if the minimum wage offered the potential for a living wage, it’s far from a guarantee. It also fails to address things such as availability of hours, availability of employment, pension, sick leave, vacation, health, eye, dental insurance, etc. If we had a stronger union culture, these things could be addressed with job sector collective bargaining agreements. There are certainly a variety of options, but I’m sure there has to be something better.
“If you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage, you shouldn’t have employees.”
I don’t know what business your BIL is in, but lets stick to fast food: if your brother wants to add Milkshakes to his menu, but can’t afford a machine to make shakes or the base product for his freezer, what does he do? He probably isnt calling the Milkshake machine company and complaining their MSRP is unjustifiable. He certainly doesn’t call the ice cream company and demand they lower their prices so he can stock his freezer. Something tells me he probably just decides to not offer milkshakes. Same thing with hiring: if you can’t afford that person you want to hire, you cant hire them. It’s not their fault, its your business isn’t making enough money to necessitate them. I obviously realize that the dream of the small business owner is to push all of the labor onto minimally (or less) paid employees, but maybe thats not sustainable for the whole world.
He can go make minimum wage for a couple of years and then see if he’s still got the same idea.
Daughter grows up, joins the work force, takes 30% less annually than her male counterpart and dad can’t understand why she would settle for such a shitty salary.
There’s no point arguing with people like that. They’ll never see it from anyone else’s perspective. They lack this ability, because they’re morons. And they don’t even care to try, because they’re selfish. Just call them a selfish moron or think it to yourself and move on to something more productive like anything at all.
“If your boss pays you minimum wage that means he would pay you less, but he doesn’t want to go to jail!” – Chris Rock
Remember, minimum wage exists because if the people didn’t fight for it, businesses and corporations would pay you less than you could survive on and tell you you should be happy to have that job and you’re ungrateful.
So donβt go to fast food restaurants. If he doesnβt respect the people working there, he should stand on his principles and stay out.
Heh, tell BIL that in Denmark, there is no actual minimum wage.
And then tell BIL that Denmark is a social democracy, and the effective minimum wage, because of very strong unions, is about 20$.
Tell him the work week is 37 hours, employers can’t force anyone to do overtime, and that there’s government mandated 5 weeks of paid vacation pr anno.
And then tell him education, healthcare ect. is free.
and then enjoy watching his brain explode.
I think the stigma against fast food is so beyond ignorant. It needs the same amount of food safety and sanitation that any other restaurant needs and there can be good quality fast food if the place was ran properly.
It should be set up so that the average 18 year old United State Citizen can earn minimum wage and survive reasonably with a secure home. This should be doable without needing privileges like inheritance or family to live with.
Then when this hypothetical Person can maintain their survival and begin saving, they can progress into a “career” and pull those bootstraps like we’re supposed to.
Your BIL wants to make the bootstraps so short you can’t even grab them to start pulling yourself up tho, how is that reasonable?
We donβt need to control wages as so much as we need to control money and itβs (lack of) value.
In 1964 the minimum wage was $1.25 but, because of the fact that money was real (ie. contained something of value) that would be worth $26.50 today.
We, as a society, have been robbed β¦
I do too. I think it should be replace with a self adjusting living wage. I came up with this below. Not perfect but a good start.
1.Β They already have studies and calculations that show what the livable wage for each county should be based on cost of living.
2. They should set each counties minimum living wage based on a average livable wage of the county you live in and the 5 surrounding counties.
3. They need to add 5 % to adjust for inflation and they can offer the bottom tier of pay to no more than 15% of jobs in that county. Pay has to be adjusted and increased for certain fields.
4. Healthcare is to not be tied to employment and can’t cost over 2-% of annual income.
5. Taxes and insurance rates for property and automobiles can only be a certain percentage of the value that you provide to the county from a certified appraisal company not an estimate provided by the county. The cost of the appraisal is deducted from taxes.
6. Rental property can not charge more than .5% of appraisal value for rent if its a single unit with minimum1/2 acre of land. Each apartment must be appraised as a unit and individually to find an average and rent can be up to 1%.
7. We need to enact an equal trade agreement with all trade partners instead of tariffs. If the US buys “x” amount from foreign countries they must also buy “x” amount from the US.
8. Set a cap on military and government funding.
9. Set a minimum on school funding . Teachers and Healthcare workers must be paid within top 50% of pay ranges for that county.
10. Only be allowed to promote and sell healthy food and products. Ban ingredients that are know to cause health issues, like the rest of the world does. All foods that exceed certain percentages of the daily servings per oz. should be taxed. On the production side so they’ll start to create healthier options.
11. Utilities can be no more than “x” percentage of thevliving wage. Like maybe .1%.
If we encounter artificial inflation then those companies have to pay employees more. They will only be able to raise prices if they’re willing to raise pay.
We need put the burden on them to keep prices and cost of living low.
Abolish min wage and see how fast people will hop jobs till they find one that pays the most
If your business cannot afford living wages, your business is not viable. Furthermore, your business has no right being a drain on society.
Your BIL sounds like an AIL
Most folks who don’t have any exposure (or recent exposure) to hourly jobs are out of sync with the need for a minimum wage.
Goodwill Industries is a place that has a national exemption to pay less than minimum wage in most places; and consequently their business is booming (between paying as little as 1.00 an hour to mentally disabled folks sorting donations to charging 5x what they used to for things folks donated) – other industries want that and are fighting to prevent increases. It’s acute for small businesses because their revenues are smaller and for most SBs, owners can do whatever they want with the money they get – having to pay someone minimum wage or more to do a menial task they don’t want to is a huge hit for them, both in profit and ego.
Capitalism doesnβt care if people die
His status as boyfriend should be abolished
Your brother in law strikes me as someone who wouldn’t like it if someone tried to low ball him for his services but feels no shame asking the same of others
If she’s always been paid under the tale, or doesn’t have the minimum time worked, will she be elgible for Social Security?
I’m sure the BIL doesn’t have medical and unemployment for his daughter.
My pushback is usually if you don’t want a higher – or any – minimum wage, then you as a business owner should be lobbying for UBI. If it’s set to the levels I want then it is no longer your responsibility to pay a wage high enough for people to survive.
> His company has 0 employees
He’s not offering a wage anyone will consider taking.
> he continues to say minimum wage shouldn’t exist.
That’s not the cure for his “zero employee problem”. If minimum wage doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean a line of potential employees appears willing to make pennies. If you pay people like they are prison labor, you’re going to get shivved.
> so thankfully, only his teenage daughter is affected. And she’s paid under the table…
It’s not really “under the table”, as family businesses don’t have to follow employer-employee rules. You can have your 10-year-old bussing tables in your restaurant, it’s not a violation of anything except robbing them of a nice childhood.
I’d really like to hear him explain the tasks the daughter does and how much she is paid. If it’s just 2 hours of work in a 8-hour day with 6 hours looking at her phone, yeah that’s worth $50/day. Also, it keeps her off the streets and not impregnated by some idiot, like her mom did.