Quote:
Originally Posted by maureenod
Everyone needs to make a decent wage, even $15 hour is hard to live on. Welfare has to come into play at present minimum wage. Business have to factor it in, also they have to get rid of deadbeats. Shape up or ship out.
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Yes, it is. But minimum wage jobs are not intended to be enough for a sole breadwinner to support a family of four. They are entry level jobs for kids to get some $$ and workplace experience.
So, If we raise the pay of the high school drop out burger flipper from $ 7 to $15/hr., then the high school graduate assistant manager making $11 wants $20. The manager with an associates degree getting $17 wants $30. The regional manager with a bachelor's degree getting $25 want $40. Now, when the business "factors it in", the Big Mac meal goes from $7 to $15, and the burger flipper still works the same 1 hour to buy his dinner. Meanwhile, the seniors on fixed incomes fall further behind. They now are forced to re-enter the job market, and the manager would much rather hire a mature person with 40 years experience who is reliable than a kid who calls in sick when the surf is up and spends his work time on his cell phone. Bye-bye entry level job.
At the same time, the widget factory worker across town who screws tab A into slot B gets $15 and so on up his food chain, so that the price of American widgets goes from $10 to $14, while Chinese widgets stay $7. Pretty soon, the widget factory is priced out of the market and closes, leaving all those workers who thought they were getting a big raise unemployed. But not to worry, when they give up looking for work, they no longer count as unemployed, so that rate stays around 5%. Nothing to see here, everything is just fine.