welfare versus minimum wage

[Azalin]

Because more money solves everything.

especially if it's stolen back from those evil corporate swine that are living high off the sweat of underpaid, exploited laborers.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Azalin

[PromoTheRobot]

Because more money solves everything.

 

Signed,

Mitt Romney

[TakeYouToTasker]

Signed,

Mitt Romney

Oh look, it's an unmitigated moron.

[IDBillzFan]

i read "the common picture of the fast food worker is inaccurate...". did you read something else?

 

I'm not sure why anyone would care, unless they were astonishingly trying to argue that fast food companies SHOULD pay more money because their employees aren't just kids looking for some summer spending money.

 

And you wouldn't be THAT stupid, would you?

Edited August 31, 2013 by LABillzFan

[birdog1960]

I'm not sure why anyone would care, unless they were astonishingly trying to argue that fast food companies SHOULD pay more money because their employees aren't just kids looking for some summer spending money.

 

And you wouldn't be THAT stupid, would you?

go back and see what the original premise of the thread was and ask yourself how this piece of data relates.

[DC Tom]

go back and see what the original premise of the thread was and ask yourself how this piece of data relates.

 

It relates because you compared welfare payments to minimum wage.

[mead107]

Welfare should have a limit on how long you can collect.

 

Minimum wage should be 20 per hour that would make my wage $99.

[Jauronimo]

go back and see what the original premise of the thread was and ask yourself how this piece of data relates.

Its about as relevant to the discussion as the Triangel Shirt factory and working conditions in Pakistan. Not at all.

[birdog1960]

it relates in that there are about 1.2 million adult fast food workers that are employed in such jobs as their primary source of income that are subsidized by taxpayers to make ends meet every month to the benefit of the fast food industry -ie corporate welfare. in addition, there are likely millions more that would choose to work in such or similar jobs if the compensation matched or bettered welfare.

Edited September 3, 2013 by birdog1960

[DC Tom]

it relates in that there are about 1.2 million adult fast food workers that are employed in such jobs as their primary source of income that are subsidized by taxpayers to make ends meet every month to the benefit of the fast food industry -ie corporate welfare. in addition, there are likely millions more that would choose to work in such or similar jobs if the compensation matched or bettered welfare.

 

In other words, you're arguing that fast foot companies should pay more to their workers, as their workforce has evolved from being kids holding temp jobs to adults looking for long-term employment.

[Jauronimo]

it relates in that there are about 1.2 million adult fast food workers that are employed in such jobs as their primary source of income that are subsidized by taxpayers to make ends meet every month to the benefit of the fast food industry -ie corporate welfare. in addition, there are likely millions more that would choose to work in such or similar jobs if the compensation matched or bettered welfare.

Those jobs dont pay more because they aren't !@#$ing worth it! The only way those positions will pay more is by federal mandate in the form of a much higher minimum wage. Should that occur, those positions will largely cease to exist. Businesses will not run at a loss to suit your warped version of social justice.

 

You and MDP can drone on endlessly about corporate welfare but McDonalds and Walmart didn't urge citizens to spend beyond their means prior to employing them.

[IDBillzFan]

Those jobs dont pay more because they aren't !@#$ing worth it! The only way those positions will pay more is by federal mandate in the form of a much higher minimum wage. Should that occur, those positions will largely cease to exist. Businesses will not run at a loss to suit your warped version of social justice.

 

You and MDP can drone on endlessly about corporate welfare but McDonalds and Walmart didn't urge citizens to spend beyond their means prior to employing them.

 

This should pretty much end the thread as well as their way of thinking, but, y'know, to some people justice must be done, even if it's painted as "social."

[birdog1960]

Those jobs dont pay more because they aren't !@#$ing worth it! The only way those positions will pay more is by federal mandate in the form of a much higher minimum wage. Should that occur, those positions will largely cease to exist. Businesses will not run at a loss to suit your warped version of social justice.

 

You and MDP can drone on endlessly about corporate welfare but McDonalds and Walmart didn't urge citizens to spend beyond their means prior to employing them.

so, the alternatives to corporate welfare, in this scenario are personal welfare and letting people try to exist without necessities. the latter threatens societal unrest (we'll disregard the conscience argument) and is not gonna happen. therefore, you're choosing personal welfare as the solution while simulataneously criticizing those that accept it. and mcdonalds and walmarts entire business model hinges on the current system, not that it couldn't be adapted if forced.

[TakeYouToTasker]

so, the alternatives to corporate welfare, in this scenario are personal welfare and letting people try to exist without necessities. the latter threatens societal unrest (we'll disregard the conscience argument) and is not gonna happen. therefore, you're choosing personal welfare as the solution while simulataneously criticizing those that accept it. and mcdonalds and walmarts entire business model hinges on the current system, not that it couldn't be adapted if forced.

You don't listen very well. McDonalds is not a chain, the individual restaurants are franchises which are owned by small businessmen; each restaurant under the very best of conditions (ie. the business owner owns the property outright, and has no mortgage) has a margin of 10%. In this best case senario, labor costs take up 30% of gross revenue. The other 60% are largely fixed costs: 30% to food costs (although that has been steadily climbing, and usually approaches 33-35%), and traditional overhead accounts for the other 30%.

 

So, to summarize:

 

30% to food

30% to fixed overhead

30% to labor

10% profit

 

You seek to roughly double labor costs to 60%. This not only completely nixes the profit, but demands that opperating costs run at 120% of total gross revenues.

 

You don't see how absurd that sounds?

[Jauronimo]

so, the alternatives to corporate welfare, in this scenario are personal welfare and letting people try to exist without necessities. the latter threatens societal unrest (we'll disregard the conscience argument) and is not gonna happen. therefore, you're choosing personal welfare as the solution while simulataneously criticizing those that accept it. and mcdonalds and walmarts entire business model hinges on the current system, not that it couldn't be adapted if forced.

I've never seen the term personal welfare (there doesn't appear to be any documented use of this term on the internet) and I disagree with your use of corporate welfare.

 

Corporate welfare could be subsidies and tax breaks for a company which doesn't need them, but paying employees a market wage is not corporate welfare. It is not the responsibility of an employer to make sure employees are paid according to their needs or can live within their means. Are you proposing that prior to hiring employers perform financial background checks and make sure their prospects can live on the wage the position pays? Sounds like that would eliminate the burden on the tax payer which you denounce yet insist is absolutely necessary. Until you can prove that those earning minimum wage are being paid well below their market rate by some form of corporate collusion or back office deal with state and federal governments, then low wages are not a form of corporate welfare.

 

The options you've presented aren't the only choices and conclusions you've drawn are totally unrealistic. There was a time when there was no such thing as public assistance and welfare and there was little to no civil unrest and the streets were conspicuously absent of piles of the deceased. You have NO reason to believe that cutting or even totally eliminating benefits would result in such a scenario, and since at no time did I mention cutting or eliminating benefits it looks you've presented a false choice.

 

As for the bolded, you make no sense. You continue to suggest that when a 56 year old, single mother of 5 cannot pay her bills on a McDonalds wage that its somehow a failure of the system and point to the corporation as the problem. If they only paid more this wouldn't be the case. You fail to realize that this is exactly how the system is supposed to work. You shouldn't be making min wage at 56, you shouldn't be working at McDonalds at that age, and if you are, you shouldn't have 5 kids. The system incentivizes better decision making. There is no system out there that can support our current lifestyle and still reward poor decisions.

 

The biggest issue here is that you continue to believe that forcing corporations to pay a higher minimum wage is a cure all. For the sake of discussion lets say 10 million people currently earn min wage making $7.50 an hour. Will we be better off when min wage is doubled and only 1 million people earn this wage? No, and thats the economics of the situation. Market forces don't just cease to exist because of your tragically misguided yet good intentions.

 

In sum, you see a system failure, I see the system performing as intended. Employees should be paid a wage dictated by market forces. Whether or not some individuals require more than they're worth is a different matter and inconsequential to determining wages.

Edited September 3, 2013 by Jauronimo

[birdog1960]

firstly, no one said minimum wage was a cure all. it's a start. secondly, perhaps no one is "supposed" to be working minimum wage at 56 (i agree, if you define minimum wage at the current levle) but are their enough living wage jobs around for everyone at 56 to have one? the answer is clearly "no". in your nostalgia for "the good old days" you might want to look at life expectancy, living conditions (standard of living), child labor and unsafe working conditions (and even factory catastrophes as cited in an earlier post). and yes there was unrest. there was an undeclared war in west virginia between coal workers and their masters for example. but the company always won so it's not talked about so much. and the biggest issue is that when a living wage isn't provided, the slack is made up. are you arguing that it won't soon be. if you accept the premise that it will then there are only a finite number of solutions. prehaps you imagine others than i stated. by all means, share them.

 

finally, "personal welfare" was so stated to differentiate it from corporate welfaRE. if you didn't understand the meaning, then i understand your search for iunternet precendence. if you did, it seems a silly waste of time.

Edited September 3, 2013 by birdog1960

[Jauronimo]

firstly, no one said minimum wage was a cure all. it's a start. secondly, perhaps no one is "supposed" to be working minimum wage at 56 (i agree, if you define minimum wage at the current levle) but are their enough living wage jobs around for everyone at 56 to have one? the answer is clearly "no". in your nostalgia for "the good old days" you might want to look at life expectancy, living conditions (standard of living), child labor and unsafe working conditions (and even factory catastrophes as cited in an earlier post). and yes there was unrest. there was an undeclared war in west virginia between coal workers and their masters for example. but the company always won so it's not talked about so much. and the biggest issue is that when a living wage isn't provided, the slack is made up. are you arguing that it won't soon be. if you accept the premise that it will then there are only a finite number of solutions. prehaps you imagine others than i stated. by all means, share them.

 

finally, "personal welfare" was so stated to differentiate it from corporate welfaRE. if you understand the meaning, then i understand your search for iunternet precendence. if not, it seems a silly waste of time.

It seems silly to introduce terms which have no established meaning and then fail to define that term in this or any conversation.

 

A "living wage" is being provided. "Living wages" are out there. You have to do you part or else no wage is livable. What the !@#$ don't you understand? At age 56 you should have skills and experience which make you a more valuable employee than a zit faced 17 year old. If in 40 years of work experience you fail to differentiate yourself from a teen with no experience and no skills, its not an indictment on the system. Its a reflection on the individual. At that level of incompetency what system can you thrive in?

 

I'll propose solutions when you identify an actual problem The last 10 pages of this thread have been dedicated to explaining to you why letting the best and most efficient economic system thats ever existed determine a market wage isn't a problem. Your argument boils down to "people aren't compensated according to their needs which means capitalism is broken". And that situation is not a problem. That phenomenon is by design.

 

You seem to think life should be idiot proof. Why?

[B-Man]

Raising the Minimum Wage Is Not the Answer

by Michael Tanner

 

On August 19, the Cato Institute released a study by me and Charles Hughes, The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, 2013: An Analysis of the Total Level of Welfare Benefits by State, showing that a family collecting welfare benefits from seven common programs – Temporary assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, public housing assistance, utilities assistance (LIHEAP) and free commodities – could receive more than what a minimum wage job would pay in 35 states. Critics responded: so raise the minimum wage.

 

Making work pay better, including the sort of entry level jobs that people leaving welfare can expect to find, is a terrific goal. Unfortunately, government has very little ability to force such increases. Attempts to simply mandate that businesses pay more, through increased minimum wages or living wage laws, as well as attempts to mandate employee benefits like health insurance (see Obamacare), primarily result in fewer jobs.

 

The amount of compensation a worker receives is more or less a function of his or her productivity. As Greg Mankiw, Chairman and Professor of Economics at Harvard University explains, “Economic theory says that the wage a worker earns, measured in units of output, equals the amount of output the worker can produce.” This somewhat oversimplifies, of course. There are other factors involved. But one can’t just arbitrarily declare a worker’s value.

 

The academic evidence on this point is pretty clear. A comprehensive review of more than 100 studies on the minimum wage by David Neumark and William Wascher for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 85 percent of the studies they reviewed found negative employment effects. Newmark and Wascher concluded, “the preponderance of the evidence points to disemployment effects… [and] studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.”

 

Indeed, evidence of employment losses goes all the way back to 1938 and first federally imposed minimum wage. The U.S. Department of Labor concluded that that first 25-cent minimum wage resulted in the loss of 30,000 to 50,000 jobs, or 10 to 13 percent of the 300,000 workers affected by the increase.

 

 

http://finance.townh...utm_campaign=nl

 

 

 

[birdog1960]

 

It seems silly to introduce terms which have no established meaning and then fail to define that term in this or any conversation.

 

A "living wage" is being provided. "Living wages" are out there. You have to do you part or else no wage is livable. What the !@#$ don't you understand? At age 56 you should have skills and experience which make you a more valuable employee than a zit faced 17 year old. If in 40 years of work experience you fail to differentiate yourself from a teen with no experience and no skills, its not an indictment on the system. Its a reflection on the individual. At that level of incompetency what system can you thrive in?

 

I'll propose solutions when you identify an actual problem The last 10 pages of this thread have been dedicated to explaining to you why letting the best and most efficient economic system thats ever existed determine a market wage isn't a problem. Your argument boils down to "people aren't compensated according to their needs which means capitalism is broken". And that situation is not a problem. That phenomenon is by design.

 

You seem to think life should be idiot proof. Why?

yes and yes. there are many people that are unlikey to ever function well at jobs above those currently paid minimum wage. look at a bell curve for intelligence in a population. let's then define the us as the population. do i really want someone in the bottom decile or even the bottom 2 deciles working as my nurse? doing data entry? what nonminimum wage job would you envision those folks doing? 0.2X 330 million is more than a few people...even .1 is many...

 

so what would be the end result of pure capitalism and its design? i'd be willing to bet we'd again see sweatshops and child labor and factory fires and 80 hour work weeks. we have history to inform us. and is that desirable? we have far from pure capitalism now. moving a bit further form the absolute which appears to produce terrible results, doesn't seem such a bad idea.

[Luka]

You don't listen very well. McDonalds is not a chain, the individual restaurants are franchises which are owned by small businessmen; each restaurant under the very best of conditions (ie. the business owner owns the property outright, and has no mortgage) has a margin of 10%. In this best case senario, labor costs take up 30% of gross revenue. The other 60% are largely fixed costs: 30% to food costs (although that has been steadily climbing, and usually approaches 33-35%), and traditional overhead accounts for the other 30%.

 

So, to summarize:

 

30% to food

30% to fixed overhead

30% to labor

10% profit

 

You seek to roughly double labor costs to 60%. This not only completely nixes the profit, but demands that opperating costs run at 120% of total gross revenues.

 

You don't see how absurd that sounds?

 

If he's a liberal, I am going to go with no, no he does not. Afterall, with the Democratic party running things, at what percentage is the government running these days? 450% over annual revenue? Some people believe money is, in fact, growing on trees. Nevermind all the hard work the people that own these establishments have put in to get where they are. Nevermind the negative impact it has on them, even though they are doing the greatest community service of all. PROVIDING JOBS.

 

Why is the blame laid on them? Do they create the legislation that has all but driven manufacturing from this country? Support the Unions that have done the same? Are they the ones that have raised the nominal corporate tax rate to 35%? The highest in the world when discussing developed economies?

 

I don't understand why the first thing out of people's mouths is raise the minimum wage. Do you know what that does? It drives up the cost of living. The minimum wage will always be a non or difficult living wage. Always. You can make it $15 an hour. A gallon of milk will be $10, bread will be $6 so on and so forth. The best way to get people on a living wage is o have jobs available.

 

Companies are in business to make money. That's no secret. If we want manufacturing back, we have to be conducive to big business as a country. Lower corporate taxes than other developed nations, driving the unions out with right-to-work legislation and aggressively pursuing the relocation of companies to American shores through tax breaks, incentives such as land, etc.