Roy Cordato:
Do you believe that a minority teenager, maybe a high school drop out, with very few job skills, has a right to work? Or do you believe that being low skilled, maybe so low-skilled that you can only command $8 or $9 an hour in the job market, means you should have this right taken away? Oddly enough, for the progressive left, those who claim to be the most compassionate in our society, have adopted the latter position.
In fact, the position that was adopted by the Democratic Party platform this summer argues that anyone whose skills are so low that they can’t command $15 and hour has no right to gainful employment. They argue that any employer who attempts to hire such a person at a rate that is commensurate with his or her skills will be breaking the law and subject to severe penalties.
This is the reality of raising the minimum wage. If you are in favor of a legal hourly minimum wage of $15 you are arguing that a person loses his right to be employed if his skills are not at a level where he can generate at least an equal amount in production for an employer. (It should be noted that you are actually saying more than this since to hire someone for $15 an hour it probably costs an employer about $17 or $18 given Social Security taxes and mandated benefits like, in some cases, health insurance.)
Of course, this is not how the minimum wage is typically described. When raising the minimum wage is discussed we typically hear moralistic platitudes like “no one should be forced to work for less than $15 per hour” or people “deserve to receive a living wage.”
Progressives: “We Won’t Allow You to Work”
But what is never explicitly stated is the implied flip side to these clichés. When the Bernie Sanderses or Hillary Clintons of the world claim that no on should be “forced to work for less than $15 per hour” what they are really saying is that no one should be allowed to work for less than $15 regardless of how poorly they have been educated or how limited their skills. Or when they say that people deserve a living wage they never add the implied follow up which is “or no wage at all.”
In the mind of the typical progressive, there is no relationship between skills and wages. The view seems to be that if a higher minimum wage is mandated that employers will continue to make all of the same hiring decisions that they had been making previously except that the people they employ will be paid more. In some cases, more than a 100 percent more. In this progressive view, a person’s wage is just some arbitrary dollar amount that is forced upon the worker and that without a minimum wage an employer could pay his workers any positive amount above zero and the worker would be forced to take it. It is classic Marxist economics where workers are exploited and are at the mercy of employers. As Marx himself put it, there is very little difference between an employment relationship and a slave relationship.
The Left.
Always trying to ignore the Law of Supply and Demand.
Remember when ObamaCare was going to be mandatory for those working more than 30 hours a week?
How many part-time workers did we have in proportion to the entire workforce before that?
And now?
Just between the 2010 passing of ObamaCare and the re-election of Obama in 2012 our nation lost 370,000 Full-Time jobs while gaining 1,500,000 Part-Time jobs!
While these numbers grew in Obama’s 2nd term the ”economic outlook appeared to improve since more people were working (albeit fewer hours or two jobs).
The minimum wage excites some workers, until they learn that their job is gone.
Last Month Hillary dissed an entry level job that employs 1.2 million mostly females…..child care.
https://youtu.be/UvBQQQBlzZ4?t=27m15s
She doesn’t know what to think of the ”gig” economy, either.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/13/in-economic-address-hillary-clinton-calls-out-gig-economy.html
Apparently 90 million Americans can make extra money renting out a spare room, designing a website … even driving their own car. But Hillary needs to get her mitts on such cash, or that is no good.
She’d dismiss the legitimate income that workers generate for themselves and their families and the service that’s provided to customers – often at a lower cost, better quality, and more safety –than their traditional counterparts.
She calls into question those ”gig” jobs’ workplace protections.
Because it is in REGULATION that she and her kind control all jobs and income.
Forcing emmploies to join or belong to some corupt to its rotten core labor union should be Unconstitutional
I’m not sure where Curt comes up with such nonsensical rhetoric to try to stick to the wall but it isn’t some binary argument.
High school drop outs, low skilled, drug user, yak yak yak yak yak!
One big problem thanks to GOP austerity demands and intentional economic sabotage is that many adult main bread winners now rely on these low level jobs and yes, they include low skilled, drop outs, etc.
So it gets down to this. Either the employer can pay a living wage or these full time workers can rely on government assistance to pick up the difference. This is somewhat the new norm as we’ve seen Walmart, the banking industry, even overseas contractors who cook for our Senators actually sitting up work seminars training their full time workers how to apply for food stamps, housing, etc. A social worker in Louisville KY who works solely on homeless cases told me that 65% of her clients worked full time jobs but their simply wasn’t enough left for housing.
These folks are raking in $Billions while subsidizing their labor cost off the backs of better paid Americans.
Now this is something many of the rabid right won’t acknowledged or admit to. They hear it but quickly change subject, blame Obama and such. They send in folks like Trolling Bill to utter falsehoods and back them up with incoherence gibberish but as far as addressing that issue? As far as an intelligent rebuttal or even an admission that this is even possibly a fall out? Ain’t gonna happen.
It gets back to that joke about a Democrat, a Republican, and a tea bagger walking into a bar serving complimentary doughnuts. The Republican quickly snatches 11 of the 12 doughnuts on the plate, taps the tea bagger on the shoulder and says, “watch that guy, he’s trying to steal your doughnut.
States and cities that have higher than federal minimum wage laws all seem to be doing pretty well .
Now about that minimum wage, it it scheduled to go into effect in CA in 2022 and NY by the end of 2018
No one seems to mention WHEN that 15 dollar minimum kicks in, they make it seem like it is imminent .
AS for that low skill teenager, well at 15 per hour in 2022 he will be the last to be hired. Before he gets hired all the skilled workers will have jobs at an almost living wage. That single mom supporting 2 kids will be making a whole $24000 working at Walmart 32 hours per week
of courde that nirvana is still 6 whole years away
@Ajay42302: And thanks for adding your own “nonsensical rhetoric” to the non-debate. You’re a Dem cheerleader, and lose any amount of clout you may have had when you write “teabagger”. Might as well call people the “N” word, bigot.
Anything else, little troll? Your rant said just about nothing.
And I’m pretty sure Dems, with Taxes and Socialism, are the ones empirically stealing the donuts.
Reps demand you make your own…or not eat them.
Thinking other lib/dems want you to shut up, given the damage you do to their cause.
If I have to pay someone $15.00 an hour but they only add $12.00 an hour to my income, why would I even hire them? I’m not in business to create jobs, that’s just a side effect.
But it’s even worse, if I have to pay someone $15.00 an hour, it actually costs me close to thirty to employ them. What with increased taxes, government regulations, paperwork…
This Friday a freakin’ college graduate put in an application at a print shop that I partner. She couldn’t divide a piece of paper into four equal parts with a pencil and a ruler!
Your education means nothing. Can you do the job?
It is not my responsibility to pay anyone a “living wage”, it is their responsibility to prepare themselves to earn one!
@Nathan Blue: And other than a complete tuck tail and run from my argument and to express your contempt towards anyone not marching lockstep to your unhinged and rabid idealogy, what precisely was the purpose of your response?
@Ajay42302: I appreciate that Nathan Blue explained to you that your use of that term is equivalent to calling blacks niggers.
Now, don’t you realize how the use of such incendiary language causes most people to stop at the word and not follow your ”argument” through to its end?
If you don’t you are really an idiot.
Look up your term.
I thought the Left used to like homosexuals.
I guess those days are over.
@Nanny G:
No, there’s no equalivance in a teabagger and a racial slur. None. It doesn’t compare.
As I recall, teabagger is the name the stupid bastards gave themselves and seemed quite proud of it til someone told them a different meaning. So if the bag fits, wear it.
But that is still no reason to advocate having middle income workers subsidize billionaire’s lower skilled full time workers.
@Ajay42302): You really show your ignorance! Curt didn’t write this! Roy Cordato was the author. Curt just provided the opportunity for discussion. You need to look up the teabagger comment.
@Ajay42302:
Define living wage. If two people go for a job and one has a child their living wage will be higher than the one without a child. So the employer will hire the one without a child. When the childless person has a child his living wage must go up as his cost of living has just risen. The employer can now fire him and hire another childless person because his living wage will be lower.
This is why setting arbitrary wage rates based on political means and not market and skills is a fools game.
@Mully:
Well that employer will not get a good honest hard working worker if he is always looking for the cheapest labor possible, will he ?
@Mully:
You avoid my question and present another, as if your argument makes the other disappear.
How is it right for billionaires who profit in huge proportions to subsidize labor cost using middle income workers? As said, they are actually providing training seminars for their full time employees to qualify for government assistance. They make $billions while my tax dollars are providing food, housing, medicine, child care, etc. to offset their low wages or in short, to subsidize what would be a living wage.. I have a problem with that and would thing you would too.
How do you address that problem?
@john: What that employer has done is give 1st time workers an entry job.
Then, after proving their abilities, he has let them get into a better paying job…..elsewhere.
Sometimes jobs just require a warm body.
Someone who can push a mop.
Someone who will walk around all night thus scaring off would-be criminals.
Those are all great resume boosters IF you’ve shown up on time, spent your time on the job WORKING and had a good attitude.
Why should you want new workers stuck in such crappy jobs for life?
@john: Define living wage.
Fast food already has a high turnover of employees. Artificially raise wages and you’ll not get good honest workers but automation.
@Ajay42302:Your argument sounds like you are targeting Walmart. I did not avoid anything. You mentioned “living wage”. I asked you to define it. How can your definition work in a market based economy?
@Mully:
You are the 4th individual to respond to my comment and the 4th to run from it.
I fail to see how defining the minimum income necessary for a full time worker to meet their basic needs (hint, I just answered your question of a living wage) addresses the fact that Walmart, the banking industry, foreign contractors, motel chains, and on and on are having higher wage workers pick up part of their labor cost.
This free market pie doesn’t work, has never worked, and we’re certainly seeing it fail now with loss of employee bargaining rights, loss of prevailing wages in many states, and a MW being held too low for too long. It didn’t work post civil war (speaking of the North), it didn’t work for coal miners working for the company store, it didn’t work during the child labor years of the industrial boom, and it doesn’t work now as more full time workers are turning to government assistance to supplement their basic needs.
What’s so wrong with their billionaire employers picking up that tab rather than I?
I understand that’s a question many of the radical right would rather avoid.
@Ajay42302:
Still refuse to define living wage. Which is the crux of your argument. You keep railing against billionaires who are supposed to provide this living wage you want.
You are a Marxist. Free market doesn’t work? What does? The socialist paradise of Venezuela?
You aren’t picking up anyones tab. Go look at who actually pays the lions share of taxes in the US. It’s not you.
@Mully:
Okay, obviously you and/or Bill follow the same play book.
I gave you the answer in black and white, even pointed it out, and in Bill trolling fashion, you couldn’t even read it, pretend it isn’t there, continue with whatever childish games you folks play.
Here it is again.
Here, I’ll answer it slower for you;
Get it? The difinition of MW is the minimum income necessary for a full time worker to meet their basic needs. Questions? See it? Slower?
No, I’m not. “I” don’t need their money. I’m not talking about me other than picking up their tab.
Where in the hell do you and/or Bill come from with your alternate universe lunacy? The one’s not paying taxes (which is ultimately false as they pay sales tax, local tax, state tax, school tax, road fuel tax) are the LOW INCOME, those that might not be making a livable wage/ “income necessary for a full time worker to meet their basic needs”. So people like me are not only paying taxes to support them but I’m paying for their food stamps, WIC, health care, school lunches, housing, and on and on.
Oh, I don’t know, how about an income necessary for a full time worker to meet their basic needs? And looking back at the last century, it did.
So, should this be a state min wage, or a federal one, Ajay?
In Alabama a one month rent is only $350.
In San Fran, CA a one bedroom is $3448 a month if you don’t mind a commute.
It is $3907 for a 1 bedroom in town.
In rural Utah a one bedroom is more than Ala but less than CA.
It is $550/month.
In the Salt Lake City business corridor it is more, $650/month.
And, what EXACTLY are workers’ ”basic needs,” Ajay?
A roof, clothing and food.
Heating and cooking gas.
But a telephone?
Cell phone?
Smart Phone?
Streaming videos?
Air conditioning?
Washer?
Dryer?
Car?
Dishwasher?
Microwave oven?
Hair extensions?
Professional nail care?
Cable or satellite TV?
Tattooing?
Designer label shoes?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I once had a nice one bedroom apartment in LB that a welfare mom told me wasn’t good enough for her.
She was appalled by it.
What I found amazing: original Malibu tiles and art decco bath and kitchen she found old and sub-par.
@Nanny G:
While running from the fact that that full time workers live in poverty and many homeless and why it’s unfair for my tax dollars being confiscated for their basic needs, you inject the old “but, but, they have refrigerators and hell, some even have air conditioners”.
I’m talking basic needs and you’re trying to imply that a single MW mom ls living the good life. How about this. Rather than me paying for the rich man’s labor bill with my tax dollars, how about he/her pay “an income necessary for a full time worker to meet their basic needs” and then let them buy their own smart phones and such?
@Ajay42302:
Your premise, as all marxist rhetoric, is egregiously wrong. Your position boils down to the bizarre concept that the employer’s primary function is to provide an arbitrarily determined income for those whom he hires that is based on an arbitrarily and POLITICALLY determined amount, rather than the actual value of the job. Such a ridiculous ideological position ignores that an employer goes into business for the absolute purpose of making a profit. Employers hire employees in order to accomplish the primary purpose of making a profit. It is NOT the employer’s primary purpose to hite employees for the secondary purpose of making a profit.
The hypocrisy of leftists ranting about needing a $15/hr “living wage” while, for example, Los Angeles unions lobbied to be exempt from the LA city $15/hr wage laws shouldn’t surprise anyone, as it fits right in with the hypocrisy of both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns failing to pay their workers this “living wage” as they demogogued the issue. The stuttering, sputtering and backpedalling exhibited by leftists when they are asked why not $30/hr, or even $100/hr, if a living wage is needed demonstrates the economic stupidity of this marxist nonsense.
What ajay and other leftists are arguing for is for the government to determine how much of what an employer makes can be taken from him by government edict. The greed and envy just drips from your posts, ajay, right along with your ignorant bigotry.
Venezuela’s current economic situation is entirely due to leftist economic stupidity. The totalitarian demands by leftists for arbitrarily determined “living wage” regulations demonstrates the same totalitarian mindset that the recent Venzeulan law giving the leftist government the power to force citizens to work for 60 days (and the possibility of extension) in the fields to grow food, due to the extreme food shortages that have developed due to the inevitable outcome of idiotic leftist economic policy.
We should hold the leftist trolls to their same rhetorical tricks. Just as pro-aborts blather and shriek that only people who can get pregnant have a right to express opinions about abortion, only leftists who run businesses where every employee makes at least $15/hr – including the janitors, interns and all other low-skilled jobs – can express an opinion on raising a $15/hr minimum wage.
@Pete:
No one that I know of, left or right, conservative or liberal, is advocating $30 or $100 an hour. Both parties to my knowledge understand the damage that would do.
Both should understand that $.10 or $.25 would also be bad for the economy in today’s time, that it would be devastating.
Other than that you are the 5th troll to tuck tail and run from the point I made.
ahhhh guys that 15dollar minimum? isn’t that supposed to be in increments over say the next 5-6 years?
Our economy ? Those places that have higher than federally mandated minimum wage all seem to be doing better than the US average
and why are we listening to conservative economists after they crashed the economy so bad?
weren’t you guys all saying that Obama was going to cause runaway inflation? and that printing more money would crash the value of the dollar? Exactly WHEN have you ever been right about the economy ?????
What part has the GOP Congress that has been dominate for the last 20 years played a part in the US economy ? Ever wonder why their approval ratings are in the teens 1/3 that of Obama’s ?
Conservatives are a small part of what nationally appears to be the minority party
@Nanny G:
hair extensions ?
had to throw that one in Nanny? really
@Mully:
the 1% that the GOP is always catering to will be most hurt by a rise in the minimum wage
Why is it that when cons talk about returning to the glory of the Golden Years of the USA they fail to want to see a return to the taxes and real minimum wage we had back in the day ? It hasn’t even kept up with inflation
@john: Hey!
Why is it that, every time there’s a ”black life that mattered,” it is the black-owned hair extension store that gets totally looted then burned?
It must be a real necessity.
So, national or state min wage?
My young friends here in Utah could live like kings on a barely-scraping-by wage for Silicon Valley or San Fran.
At $7.25/hour here, they can eat out, go on vacations and enjoy their leisure.
Nanny just a guess but none of your young friends are earning those big bucks that the young can get at Apple and Google.
Very few only the best and brightest can afford to move to or live in SF
They don’t HAVE to live there, they choose to,
Nanny here is an ad for a valet car packing company in SF with a starting wage of 17 dollars plus tipshttp://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/trp/5733916458.html
show that to some of your young friends. Ask them if they would be willing to live in a van or crappy motorhome for the chance to earn 3o dollars an hour
With a bonus for being able to enjoy SF
@john: At a Gross (before tax and deductions) of only $2,924 that valet can’t even make the rent on a one bedroom apartment.
My friends live in their own townhouses, eat out, take vacations and do charitable works, too.
Your imaginary valet would need two such jobs to live in SF.
Even on the outskirts he’d need a room mate.
@Nanny G: People live large on $7.25 an hour in Utah? What the hell does that say about Utah?
I see where Utah may go Dem this Nov. Do Mormons shun Trump because of his multiple marriages or his generally hedonistic lifestyle?.
@Ajay42302:
You are so transparent in your deranged projection, ajay, with your bizarre labeling of anyone else as a troll.
You don’t even have the courage to get to the kernal of truth from your own post as you complain about YOU having to pay taxes to finance government handouts while simultaneously demanding that OTHER people be required to pay taxes for something that you don’t like being forced to pay for. Your own post establishes that you believe there is something inherently unfair about having money taken from someone who earned it to give to someone who hasn’t- you just believe that someone ELSE should be required to give up their money instead of you.
If you are willing to admit that there would be a devastating economic impact for raising minimum wage to 30 or 100 bucks an hour, upon what basis would you have us believe that arbitrarily raising – doubling from the current – wage would not have a negative impact?
Bottom line, in typical leftist fashion, you want somebody other than YOU to have to carry the burden from your virtue signalling.
Kinda like the hypocrisy of climate alarmists demanding everyone else reduce their “carbon footprint” through restricting their activities, while the alarmist flies around burning huge amounts of jet fuel on private jets going to climate alarmist conferences in exotic places.
@Richard Wheeler: Nah!
It has nothing to do with him personally.
Mitt Romney runs this state’s Republican Party.
When he tells them they will vote for this 3rd party guy who is Mormon and ex-CIA (so we know almost nothing about him) there is a huge proportion of Reps who march in lockstep to the polls to obey!
Will that mean that Hillary wins the state?
Romney said (at a Park City ”retreat,” that he’d recommend Mormons vote for Bernie rather than Trump.
He really liked Cruz.
And, I think you, yourself wrote that Cruz is basically unlikable, so, that’s pretty weird.
Romney is one of the few who really likes him.
And Trump beat him, so that’s all it was.
Vindictive, much?
Cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face?
That, too.
Utah has a lot of very likable and gullible Mormons.
They follow where ever a leader like Romney says to go.
@Richard Wheeler: As to living well on $7.50/hr full time work, yup.
Taxes are low, rents and housing is low priced.
(Did I mention that, for the same price I got for a 600 square foot condo on the beach with no parking spot, I was able to buy a home on a 10 acre plot?)
Lots of work is done by volunteers and/or prisoners.
Yeah, they WORK for their living here!
The roads are in better shape than in CA even though the weather is harder on them.
When we planned our retirement it was going to be in CA.
But, even with Prop 13 keeping property tax down, the high cost of living there was going to be an issue.
In Utah we have been living like royalty.
Earlier this week we drove for about 10 minutes to get away from the lights and watch the meteor shower. In CA it would ave taken over 2 hours to get away from city lights.
@Nanny G: $7.50 an hour is $1200 a month, less than $15,000 a year. You’d better have a lot of volunteers and prisoners working for you to live on that income.
The reason you could buy that 10 acre property was because of the profit you made on the sale of your Ca. property. Nobody could even save for a down payment on $1200 a month.
I’ve learned to love 99 cent stores–are they in Utah? They’re here in San Clemente.
If Trump loses a solid red like Utah or Georgia,-where he trails by 2, it will signify a landslide