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Might be a delay getting your Big Mac today.

Perotista said:
That would probably work without the sticker shock that would happen if it were to take place all at once. Not a bad idea.
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Every proposal for raising minimum wage I've seen has been exactly this. Phase in by year X.
 
Hmmmm. Low wage earners, mostly young people or uneducated people don't seem to understand that while decisions might look good on the surface are in fact going to bite them in the ass. You would think after electing Obama twice they would have started figuring this out.
 
Deuce said:
...because they could? It's not like there's a magical barrier preventing McDonald's HQ from shouldering the additional cost instead of the individual franchises.
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So corp headquarters should subsidize wages at franchises huh. I wonder how many employees that would be and how many dollars per employee they would pay out. So much for the corp making any money at all and so much for its stock prices and so much for all the people who invested in it.
 
MaggieD said:
I wonder if these people realize that if they're successful, many of them are out of jobs -- not because the chains can't afford it, but because for $15 an hour, they won't be settling for THEM anymore.
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They don't realize it yet.

But they will.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
So corp headquarters should subsidize wages at franchises huh. I wonder how many employees that would be and how many dollars per employee they would pay out. So much for the corp making any money at all and so much for its stock prices and so much for all the people who invested in it.
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They could eat the cost of raising wages to $15/hour and still make billions in profit. Somehow. I think they'd live.
 
Deuce said:
Ahh yes, everyone making minimum wage must be a useless human being because they're making minimum wage.
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Don't put words in my mouth Mr. Pilot.

It's common sense. If they raise the wages exponentially, they are going to require different skill sets in order to justify paying that kind of wage to people.

You don't believe this to be the case?
 
TheGirlNextDoor said:
Don't put words in my mouth Mr. Pilot.

It's common sense. If they raise the wages exponentially, they are going to require different skill sets in order to justify paying that kind of wage to people.

You don't believe this to be the case?
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No. I do not. What additional skill set do you foresee mcdonalds adding to the burger flipping?
 
Deuce said:
Which might be an argument if there were enough jobs around that paid better.

But there aren't. No matter how hard anyone works, there will always be fewer jobs than there are workers. Let alone "good" jobs.

Your fairytale universe in which everyone is paid on merit? Never existed.
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No, but that is more the rule than not - that pay is attached to "value added". If you do not have the value added of $15 an hour, then at a minimum wage of $15 an hour you are structurally unemployable.

If I may cite a bit from Jonah Goldbergs' work that touches on the subject:


Consider the debate over the minimum wage. The controversy centered on what to do about what Sidney Webb called the "unemployable class." It was Webb's belief, shared by many of the progressive economists affiliated with the American Economic Association, that establishing a minimum wage above the value of the unemployables' worth would lock them out of the market, accelerating their elimination as a class. This is essentially the modern conservative argument against the minimum wage, and even today, when conservatives make it, they are accused of — you guessed it — social Darwinism. But for the progressives at the dawn of the fascist moment, this was an argument for it. "Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites," Webb observed, "the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners."

Ross put it succinctly: "The Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him." Since the inferior races were content to live closer to a filthy state of nature than the Nordic man, the savages did not require a civilized wage. Hence if you raised minimum wages to a civilized level, employers wouldn't hire such miscreants in preference to "fitter" specimens, making them less likely to reproduce and, if necessary, easier targets for forced sterilization. Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist and adviser to Woodrow Wilson, explained: "Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind."..​


That was how we got the minimum wage. It's authors knew exactly what they were after.


Or, if you would prefer an academic online source. Go ahead and skip on down to page 699 ;).
 
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cpwill said:
No, but that is more the rule than not - that pay is attached to "value added". If you do not have the value added of $15 an hour, then at a minimum wage of $15 an hour you are structurally unemployable.

If I may cite a bit from Jonah Goldbergs' work that touches on the subject:


Consider the debate over the minimum wage. The controversy centered on what to do about what Sidney Webb called the "unemployable class." It was Webb's belief, shared by many of the progressive economists affiliated with the American Economic Association, that establishing a minimum wage above the value of the unemployables' worth would lock them out of the market, accelerating their elimination as a class. This is essentially the modern conservative argument against the minimum wage, and even today, when conservatives make it, they are accused of — you guessed it — social Darwinism. But for the progressives at the dawn of the fascist moment, this was an argument for it. "Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites," Webb observed, "the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners."

Ross put it succinctly: "The Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him." Since the inferior races were content to live closer to a filthy state of nature than the Nordic man, the savages did not require a civilized wage. Hence if you raised minimum wages to a civilized level, employers wouldn't hire such miscreants in preference to "fitter" specimens, making them less likely to reproduce and, if necessary, easier targets for forced sterilization. Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist and adviser to Woodrow Wilson, explained: "Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind."..​


That was how we got the minimum wage. It's authors knew exactly what they were after.


Or, if you would prefer an academic online source. Go ahead and skip on down to page 699 ;).
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Since mcdonalds and walmart would still be profitable even after the pay rate increase, one can argue that the value added by those employees is demonstrably higher than what they are being paid.
 
Deuce said:
Since mcdonalds and walmart would still be profitable even after the pay rate increase, one can argue that the value added by those employees is demonstrably higher than what they are being paid.
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Ah, no. There is no logical connection between those two things any more than it would be to argue that McDonald's should also begin paying $4.75 for each hamburger bun it buys rather than $0.12 (or whatever)


As for them retaining profitability - of course both companies can afford this change. It is the workers who cannot afford it. Because many of them would no longer be workers.
 
Would this new $15/hr wage apply to only fast food workers? Or would it apply to everybody, such as workers in plants who process the meat, bake the buns, load the trucks, and so on?

Then what happens to the shift managers who make $2/hr more than MW currently? Do they get a raise to $15/hr and make the same as those whom they supervise, or do they get bumped to $17/hr?
 
Can places like McD's and Walmart still make a profit if they pay $15/hr? Possibly.

Can everybody else? Phfft! No. Do we sacrifice them and the jobs they currently provide?

Even if they can, what incentive would investors have to keep their money in said company at a drastically reduced ROI when they could move their money elsewhere and keep the same or close ROI they're getting now?

People who claim corporations should pay more without raising prices just because they can are demonstrating a serious naivete and lack of understanding of both business and human nature.
 
radcen said:
Can places like McD's and Walmart still make a profit if they pay $15/hr? Possibly.

Can everybody else? Phfft! No. Do we sacrifice them and the jobs they currently provide?
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Pshaw. It's not like small businesses are A) the ones most likely to have capital flow issues and B) also the largest creator of new jobs in our economy.


....oh..... wait..... :doh
 
cpwill said:
Ah, no. There is no logical connection between those two things any more than it would be to argue that McDonald's should also begin paying $4.75 for each hamburger bun it buys rather than $0.12 (or whatever)


As for them retaining profitability - of course both companies can afford this change. It is the workers who cannot afford it. Because many of them would no longer be workers.
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How is mcdonalds supposed to sell the current number of burgers with a substantially lower workforce?

If they could do so, they'd already have done it. Because identical sales with less workforce is profitable regardless of pay.
 
radcen said:
Can places like McD's and Walmart still make a profit if they pay $15/hr? Possibly.

Can everybody else? Phfft! No. Do we sacrifice them and the jobs they currently provide?

Even if they can, what incentive would investors have to keep their money in said company at a drastically reduced ROI when they could move their money elsewhere and keep the same or close ROI they're getting now?

People who claim corporations should pay more without raising prices just because they can are demonstrating a serious naivete and lack of understanding of both business and human nature.
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No they aren't. They're outright demonstrating they understand business and human nature. Corporations could treat their employees better, but they choose not to.
 
radcen said:
Can places like McD's and Walmart still make a profit if they pay $15/hr? Possibly.

Can everybody else? Phfft! No....
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Assuming that the pay increase resulted in increased demand, and thus more business sales, and thus more need for employees, and thus more business sales, then most likely few businesses would fail due to an increase in minimum wage.
 
imagep said:
Assuming that the pay increase resulted in increased demand, and thus more business sales, and thus more need for employees, and thus more business sales, then most likely few businesses would fail due to an increase in minimum wage.
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Your wording is careful. For example, there's "increased minimum wage" and then there's a literal doubling of the MW. Which, specifically, are you speaking?
 
radcen said:
Your wording is careful. For example, there's "increased minimum wage" and then there's a literal doubling of the MW. Which, specifically, are you speaking?
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I wouldn't recommend doubling minimum wage overnight. That would be foolish, even for people who think it is doable.

However, I think that we should experiment with it. Maybe raising it 10% per year until the increase starts to either cause an inflation rate that is higher than the feds target rate, or until the increases start to reduce job opportunities. That could happen after the first increase, or maybe never. Who the heck knows? Regardless, eventually we would discover the "economically optimizing minimum wage".

In theory, it's possible (though not likely), that we could increase minimum wage up to the average productivity per worker (GDP/workers), and thats something around $50/hr. Realistically, there are socioeconomic reasons that everyone shouldn't make the same wage, thus the "economically maximizing" minimum wage is probably far less than that. We really have no clue what it is because we have never done much experimenting with it.

Based upon actual economic history, it's likely that it could be at least $10.50 an hour, because thats what it was back in the late 1960's. There is also some evidence that it may be as high as $16/hr, like it is in Australia (which has a faster growth rate, lower unemployment, and lower poverty level than the US). I just wouldn't risk our economy with those types of jumps all at once.
 
imagep said:
However, I think that we should experiment with it. Maybe raising it 10% per year
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Hmm, an economy that is still in the crapper, so you want to increase everyone's salary 10% across the board (as when you raise the bottom, everything else must rise as well)? I think a basic understanding of economics and the bad place our economy is in, one wouldn't need to actually run such an experiment to figure out what most likely will result.
 
Arbo said:
Hmm, an economy that is still in the crapper, so you want to increase everyone's salary 10% across the board (as when you raise the bottom, everything else must rise as well)? I think a basic understanding of economics and the bad place our economy is in, one wouldn't need to actually run such an experiment to figure out what most likely will result.
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Discoveries are made by experimenting, not by creating hypothisis based upon limited considerations.

My expectation would be that if we increased minimum wage, that wage increase would translate directly into increased demand, since the poor tend to spend 100% of what they make. Increased demand should result in increased business profits, and increased business expansion, creating more jobs.

I don't know that everyones income would increase by the same percentage, although I would expect that most lower income workers would receive a noticable pay raise. I have no clue how it would effect Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, although it would be interesting to find out (thus the need for experimentation).

But that's just my theory. Who the heck knows unless we try it and see.
 
Deuce said:
If they could reduce workforce they'd do it already.
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They have in countries where the cost of labor gets to a point where it is more beneficial to go with automation.

The desire to do so here, where the workers only make $7 to $8 per hour, just isn't there.

Get to labor prices like they have in Euro and Aus, they will.
 
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