-----then you agree---
A funny thing happens at $15 per hour...
- Thread starter Snarkhund
- Start date
you will appreciate this:
I had to get my car towed today. The guy was nice enough to drive me home and so we talked about the economics of towing cars. He makes 19/hour which means his employee pays closer to 25. In an 8 hour shift, his employee will be pay 200 for the guy. In that 8 hour shift the guy will drive about 200-300 miles. For which they will get paid about 1/2. They charge $5/mile (which at the time sounded like extortion). In the shift, the company will make about 750 dollars gross and pay 200 to the guy. That’s 500 to pay for administration (which is another labor cost), insurance, maintainence, advertising (another labor cost), and depreciation on the truck.
who would think towing wasn’t a viable business.
I own 2 businesses but I pay a salary not an hourly wage so maybe I dont qualify.
But I remember one contract with the government where all the secretaries who did a lot of heavy document lifting were shit except for 1 who was top notch and left after a short while for a better job. Why? the salary was absolute dog shit so they got what we paid for.
Somewhere between $7 and $15 is an effective middle ground but in labor you get what you pay for and business that run mainly on min wage at the low end often have shitty workers, high turnaround, no worker loyalty and a business stuck in the mud.
Those shitty workers don’t get better if you pay them more money. They are just shitty.
If you keep the same workers and just increase their wages then having shitty workers is the fault of management.
You can be more selective depending on how you manage your business. If instead of 7.25, I am paying 11.25 an hour I will expect a better worker and fire them if they don't because the salary gives me the ability to replace them very easily.
But when the min wage changes to 12. It punishes the good workers earning 11.25. I’ve seen it first hand. They don’t ask for money - they essentially go on strike.
Common sense would tell one that it is not the job of the US Government to determine what folks can make. It may be something that a socialist/communist government can do, but not a capitalistic one.-----For one thing, most folks in government have no idea what a decent wage would be or what it would be like to pay someone a decent wage.
This is something that can and has been proposed to be phased in over time. It can be remedied by good management in raising the min wage offered and those above them as well. retail and restaurants are the main areas where min wage is used for entry position and they can pass on additional costs if needed to.
If I am running a place and have shitty workers at 7.25 then I shuld fire them and find better employees. If 7.25 only attracts shitty workers then review the job or raise the wage. You dont save money at 7.25 gettting constant turn over and employees who dont give a fuck about the quality of their job. Wanting top quality while paying shit wages just does not go hand in hand. Either stick with the shit or hire better or raise the wage.
$7.25 for an 8 hour shift is $58. You want someone to wash dishes for 8 hours and go home with $58 for all that effort? You want someone to sweep a warehouse and take out the trash all day for $58? It is more economical to take 5 higher paid workers and have them divide it up at a smaller cost.
The only argument I have seen against moving up from the 7.25 is from people claiming job losses. Job losses going to happen anyway to those shit minimum jobs because they are unsustainable except for teenagers working in retail or MCDs.
As I said before it can be phased up and use a regional factor to match it to local cost of living standards. Any business owner who I have spoken to about it complains about losing profits but when I press them about actual costs and passing it on to customer since they compete with others subject to the same min wage requirements, the arguments fall away a bit. People get away with paying $300 a week for a shit job, then dont complain if you get shitty workers.
That's the prerogative of the business, to get what they pay for. It's not the job of the government to decide what you pay bad workers. Minimum wage needs to be abolished posthaste.