[ColdNoMore]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

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.

That is a totally false premise, based on an overly simplistic philosophy...that doesn't jive with reality.

There aren't enough jobs (mostly thanks to big corp's off-shoring) to allow everyone to 'move up.'

And how exactly does a 'kid' at convenience stores, housekeeping at hotels, fast-food joints, etc., etc....work during the day when they are in school?

In other words, there will ALWAYS be a need for adults to fill those positions.

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 insick 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.

Easy enough to solve.

Gather enough like-minded people who have invested in companies (either directly or with mutual funds/401K's/Roth's/Etc.) and tell those companies that you are willing to accept a lower return, or even take a loss...on your stocks with them.

I'm sure with that pressure off, they would be more than willing to bring those positions back to this country and thereby allow the current 'working poor'....to get better paying jobs.

And yes, I'm being totally facetious because the big cog in this wheel is the fact that upper management pay is often tied to stock performance (mine was), so unless that changes too, the incentive to reduce costs and increase profits.... will ALWAYS be there.

Easiest way to reduce costs? Send the work to a country who is looking to increase their standard of living, by having citizens willing to work for substantially less than what it takes to even survive in the USA.

The big irony of course, is that we scream at countries who are basically trying to live..."The American Dream."