California is first state to approve $15 minimum wage

[Captain N]

Raising minimum wage isn't going to make companies less profitable. They'll just cut their employee numbers and put the extra workload on the remaining employees. You really think that the corporations will just be fine with being less profitable?

Do you think employers hire people they do not need?

Do you think that having 2 part time 20 hour a week employees is more expensive on payroll than 1 40 hour a week full time employee?

Do you know what happens when a place of business sees increased sales and they're understaffed?

Businesses aren't a charity to their employees -- they hire based on need. If your now understaffed establishment can't handle the new influx of people able to shop there then you're going to bleed anyways as they go to other places for the same items.

[ranzino]

german min wage is 8,50 € /~ 9,70 $ and economy was up in arm against it. nobody moans by now

[Ahhdurr]

Good, I skipped reading 22 pages of idiocy and had all the stupid arguments summed up in one page.

[Gestopft]

Well I employ 15 people and to cover their increase in wages I will increase my costs to my consumers. Guess who my consumers are? That's right, they are the people on minimum wage.

Nobody is saying that prices won't rise at all. But the increase in prices will be less than the wage increase, because wages are only part of overhead. This is a net benefit for minimum wage workers.

Raising minimum wage isn't going to make companies less profitable. They'll just cut their employee numbers and put the extra workload on the remaining employees. You really think that the corporations will just be fine with being less profitable?

Not having enough employees to meet consumer demand also makes companies less profitable. That's the entire reason people are hired in the first place.

[Vurdah]

People talking about businesses having to close because of the gradual minimum wage increase I can only assume have downs. If people make more money they will spend more money. And do you know who gets that money? That's right, the businesses you say are going to have to close down.

Seriously people. When workers make more money they spend more money. Yes businesses have to spend more money on employees but they also make more money on the increase of products sold. It's not like when people make more money they put it into a vacuum and it is never circulated into the economy.

[Stacyrect]

Do you think employers hire people they do not need?

Do you think that having 2 part time 20 hour a week employees is more expensive on payroll than 1 40 hour a week full time employee?

Do you know what happens when a place of business sees increased sales and they're understaffed?

Businesses aren't a charity to their employees -- they hire based on need. If your now understaffed establishment can't handle the new influx of people able to shop there then you're going to bleed anyways as they go to other places for the same items.

Yes, employers do hire more employee's then neccessary. If you are in New England, working minimum wage jobs, you will likely be working 2-4 different part time jobs to get your 40 hours a week. Many min wage employers use hours of work as a weapon against their employees. If you cannot be at work, they will strip your schedule and pile on someone else. It really is a shit business tactic but effective in discipling someone where you wouldn't normally discipline them by starving them for cash. By starving, I mean don't come in when your called in or call out, your hours are stripped to maybe a day and someone else who is money hungry will get your shifts.

No, having multiple part time employees who's hours will never reach full time status is cheaper. Keep everyone starving for money so they show up for work.

It varies on the business, especially brand name business. Take retail stores like target, walmart, etc, who intentionally short change departments out of their allotted budgets so that the upper management can get bonus's, which results in fewer check out lanes with staff to actually cash you out. 1 fucking lone soilder in TLE. Absolutely no1 in sports, footwear, homewares, crafts, personals, makeup, lawn and garden, meats, dairy, produce, general merchandise, electronics. Each of these departments are supposed to be staffed by a supervisor+sales associate who is KNOWLEDGEABLE in the products their company sells. Go to fucking staples and ask them about their equipment, they don't know shit.

Take fast food chains that will rarely compliment you a meal if they fuck up or are very busy, if a manager authorizes to many freebies they are reprimanded with disciplinary action regardless of work related environments such as lack of work force, delivery drivers never showed up to deliver product customer ordered, or said worker has zero fucking training and is to high to actually be at work and can't follow simple instructions to construct a burger.

Business's now offer a *hopeful* one time coupon on your receipt to acknowledge customer feedback and that goes for absolute jack shit other then to single out mangement, supervisers, and then employees. If a customers experience is not 100%, you will be reprimanded, even if they score it at 99.99%.

No business's aren't a charity, but they definitely do not serve their employee's any better then they serve their customers. They do the absolute least fucking amount possible to stay within company standards, min wage employees are replaceable scape goats. If your understaffed establishment fucks up, no worries, all they have to do is refund you your nickels and dimes for subjecting you to a shitty experience for being overloaded beyond their capacity for which help they will not hire. From retail to food, thats the difference my friend. Your experience with a brand name product means absolutely dick fucking shit, and you'd be a stupid mother fucking retard believe different.

Infracted

[alexw]

Raising minimum wage isn't going to make companies less profitable. They'll just cut their employee numbers and put the extra workload on the remaining employees. You really think that the corporations will just be fine with being less profitable?

If you think businesses are over-staffing themselves with respect to what is needed to meet current levels of demand, then I have a bridge to sell you. The idea that modern day American businesses are not as lean as they can possibly be is beyond daft to anyone who has experience of the modern workplace.

And yes they will be less profitable. They will have no choice. There are plenty of times in the past when % profit margins have fallen, this will just be another one of them. Like every single other time they will adjust.

[Kellhound]

What results? Are you suggesting Kansas and Louisiana are doing "better" than any token liberal states?

No, that liberals are responsible for the loss of most living wage jobs in Oregon outside of the metro areas.

[Goondicker]

Earlier it was, "Ahhhhh, the Bike Shop can't handle all the sales and can't hire enough employees!"

Now it's, "Ahhhh, the Bike Shop can't pay all their employees!"

You guys need to get together and have a little huddle to get the exact methodology of the apocalypse straight.

First, you're arguing two seperate instances. Second, I wasn't even here for some bike shop argument. I've never said there will be an apocalypse, either. So you're acting like a child for really no reason.

[Khaza-R]

I would argue that $15.00/h still isn't even remotely livable in Southern California or the Bay Area.

It will be an interesting experiment for the rest of the nation though.

[Goondicker]

Do you think employers hire people they do not need? Do you think that having 2 part time 20 hour a week employees is more expensive on payroll than 1 40 hour a week full time employee?

The point you're making is actually one I brought up earlier. So I'm not sure why you're trying to educate me about something I've already said. Also, your other arguments are moot. Of course, companies aren't charity. That's childish to preach this way.

- - - Updated - - -

If you think businesses are over-staffing themselves with respect to what is needed to meet current levels of demand, then I have a bridge to sell you. The idea that modern day American businesses are not as lean as they can possibly be is beyond daft to anyone who has experience of the modern workplace.

And yes they will be less profitable. They will have no choice. There are plenty of times in the past when % profit margins have fallen, this will just be another one of them. Like every single other time they will adjust.

I guess you guys can't understand that what I'm saying is people will be understaffed and therefore overworked. I'm not arguing against a higher minimum wage, but for better pay across the board. You can't shaft the middle class just because the lower class has shit jobs...

[Endus]

I didn't read through the whole thread but it is one that I have thought a lot about recently. For those who care this article says my thoughts pretty clearly. That is that raising minimum wage does precisely nothing.

http://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/livewag.htm

That site is chock-full of baseless propaganda in place of actual arguments. Here's their "rules of the economy", by way of example;

RULE 1: No employee can be paid more money than his employer receives in income from selling the product of that employee's work.RULE 2: Every employee's income is reduced by the taxes he pays, the taxes his employer pays, and the taxes the shopkeepers pay.
RULE 3: No business ever really pays taxes.
RULE 4: No two of the following can exist at the same time for the same employee:
A living wage
Universal health care coverage
Government safety nets
RULE 5: Government must be limited in size.
RULE 6: Taking wealth away from a worker and giving it to a person who refuses to work does not make that person wealthier. It destroys that much wealth.
RULE 7: The optimum size for government is reached when the total tax rate workers/consumers pay (to all governments combined) is 10 percent.

Rule 1 is fine.
Rule 2, however, is tautologically pointless. The income's also "reduced" by the goods the employee purchases, if you really want to go that route, but it's a useless one.
Rule 3 is just objectively false, and the first real indication that this is ridiculous.
Rule 4 is sort of true, in that if you pay a living wage, said employee doesn't need safety nets, until they aren't making that living wage any longer. If they meant that you couldn't have a minimum living wage and those three things, then they're straight-up wrong, again.
Rule 5? Ideological opinion, and thus discardable as false when phrased as a statement of fact.
Rule 6? Half true; distributing wealth differently doesn't create wealth, but it doesn't destroy it, either. And when that distribution provides a stronger consumer base more able to consume, that boosts the economy, and that creates wealth.
Rule 7 is not only not a fact, but an ideological opinion, but it isn't one that any economist I have ever seen has recommended, under any circumstances, ever. They literally invented that number for no reason whatsoever.

If they'd bothered to consider that most of their "rules" are directly and objectively contradicted by most of the largest and strongest economies in the world, they could've realized this was all wharrgarble themselves.

A key failing of the entire screed is that they see taxed revenue as "destroyed", rather than seeing it for what it provides, which in many cases far outweighs that cost, to the workers who paid those taxes. There is no way the average middle-class person could afford the following, for less than their current tax load;

Private security (to replace police and military defense)
Private medical care (to replace universal coverage)
Private toll services for all road use
Increased prices to account for the added transportation costs of consumer goods due to the above tolls (profit margins mean this WILL be higher than the tax burden).
Private research and analysis teams, to replace those groups ensuring that food, water, medicine, and so forth are healthy for human use and such.
Private services, from power to water to sewage, for their properties.

Do I need to keep going? Because I'm not done, yet.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I employ 15 people and to cover their increase in wages I will increase my costs to my consumers. Guess who my consumers are? That's right, they are the people on minimum wage.

It is mathematically impossible for a wage increase to lead to a comparable price increase in any real-world setting, not unless you're introducing a second additional factor and trying to conceal its effect on the price, dishonestly.

It's literally not possible, under any circumstances, ever. This isn't ideological, it's mathematics.

Wages are necessarily a fraction of the costs that go into price. In addition to wage costs, employers typically need to pay some versions of the following;

1> Rent/property taxes, for whatever property they're based on. Yes, include part of your home's costs if you run a business from home.
2> Insurance, if just against stuff like fire damage and whatnot.
3> Material costs; even a largely service-based industry has material needs.
4> Perhaps the most obvious; profit margins.

Here's some napkin math, to demonstrate the point. Say you sell widgets for $1 each. Of that, employees are $0.50 of the price point, meaning all the rest of your costs and your profit margins make up the other 50%. This is really, really high for most businesses, so the effect here is exaggerated compared to what you'd see in practice.

Now, let's say your wage costs go up 100%. Okay, what cost you $0.50 now costs $1. You don't want to lose money, so you maintain your profit margins, and the $0.50 of remaining costs get added to that $1 of wage costs, leaving you needing to bump prices to $1.50 a widget.

Your employees are now making 200% of what they did. Your widgets only cost 150% of what they did. Whatever proportion of your price point is wage costs, if you pass the entire cost of a wage hike on to your customers, they will increase by that same proportion. This is simple, junior-high level math. It is not possible for a price increase to lead to the same increase in price, leaving no net gain in purchasing power, not unless you're ALSO boosting your profits, or some such. In which case, you're blaming the wage hike, and trying to hide the real reason.

[RickJamesLich]

Do you think employers hire people they do not need?

Do you think that having 2 part time 20 hour a week employees is more expensive on payroll than 1 40 hour a week full time employee?

Do you know what happens when a place of business sees increased sales and they're understaffed?

Businesses aren't a charity to their employees -- they hire based on need. If your now understaffed establishment can't handle the new influx of people able to shop there then you're going to bleed anyways as they go to other places for the same items.

I'm sure even the liberals here (at least the ones that live in the states) can all think of examples at their jobs where their boss fired someone and pretty much redistributed the work to other people without hiring a new person to take their place. This is just a part of the work force, raising that minimum wage so high will inevitably cause many companies to lay people off and yell "work harder!" to those that they've retained. At least businesses that survive will, and they will be able to justify it because they just increased their workers pay by a dramatic amount.

From there it gets more interesting though, since lay offs will be higher than usually that ultimately means less people are paying taxes, hence the government has less funds to work with (social programs get reduced).

There are other ways companies can save money besides just laying off workers, mainly in California they can hire illegal aliens for work (risky but in many cases worth it) or save money by cutting corners on safety policies.

[Captain N]

I'm sure even the liberals here (at least the ones that live in the states) can all think of examples at their jobs where their boss fired someone and pretty much redistributed the work to other people without hiring a new person to take their place. This is just a part of the work force, raising that minimum wage so high will inevitably cause many companies to lay people off and yell "work harder!" to those that they've retained. At least businesses that survive will, and they will be able to justify it because they just increased their workers pay by a dramatic amount.

From there it gets more interesting though, since lay offs will be higher than usually that ultimately means less people are paying taxes, hence the government has less funds to work with (social programs get reduced).

There are other ways companies can save money besides just laying off workers, mainly in California they can hire illegal aliens for work (risky but in many cases worth it) or save money by cutting corners on safety policies.

Sure people are fired and the work is redistributed when other employees are not needed. You're trying to push some narrative that higher wages will result in mass lay offs which has not been the case in the history of wage increases save in Conservative think-tanks that endlessly preach this false premise.

Maybe you need to work harder and negotiate your own wages better before you start the bullshit about illegals taking jobs. Businesses will be just fine with the wage increase...just as they have been for decades.

[Daelak]

No, that liberals are responsible for the loss of most living wage jobs in Oregon outside of the metro areas.

So urban density is 'liberal' now? You do know the majority of humans live in urban settings right?

[Wells]

No, that liberals are responsible for the loss of most living wage jobs in Oregon outside of the metro areas.

How the fuck does that one compute?

[analmoose]

Idk about him, but as for me...Why?

Because I'm not a heartless sack of Scrooge sh-t who thinks of money before human dignity.

Not referring directly to you with Scrooge comment, just FYI. Idk your motivation for asking the question.

This is what I never understand about people like you. Why is the other guy, who makes enough money to get by for himself, or even excess, because he chose not to shit out 7 children an asshole for making those life choices? Why is someone unskilled, unintelligent, to lazy, or whatever the reason that cannot support themselves and requires more and more and more from everyone always seen as the good guy? Does it just make you feel better about yourself to pander to these leaches? Guess what, if you aren't set up with a home, decent job, enough income to support yourself and children, DONT FUCKIN HAVE ANY. If you can't afford to live in Cali with your unskilled labour, MOVE SOMEWHERE CHEAPER. Why place the onus on everyone else? Make better life choices, or deal with your consequences.

[belfpala]

MOVE SOMEWHERE CHEAPER.

Retort: Can barely afford rent, don't have a car, definitely can't afford to pay the first and last month plus security deposit at a new place, and certainly don't have contacts to find work in the new place.

Yup, just moving is easy.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Retort: Can barely afford rent, don't have a car, definitely can't afford to pay the first and last month plus security deposit at a new place, and certainly don't have contacts to find work in the new place.

Yup, just moving is easy.

Also people generally have connections where they live, family, friends, former coworkers, etc.

"Just move" has never been realistic, every single place in this country has a certain cost of living tied with it. If that part of the country doesn't require businesses to pay people a wage they can live off of, that ultimately only hurts business.

[Orange Joe]

In california I'd rather have 2 20 hour jobs per week than one single 40 hour job per week at the 15 hour mark. The reason is that once you reach or pass the 40 hour mark for the single job you end up in the higher bracket in taxes you pay.

Tax brackets have nothing to do with how many hours you work, and everything to do with how much you actually earn.