Why are people on ET so against a decent minimum wage

Quote from jwecme:

Have you ever tried to retrain on minimum wage whilst supporting a family. Your argument does not really add up. It is great in theory but does not hold up in practice. You would have to work such long hours just to feed kids you would have no time to improve your skills even if you wanted to, you are trapped.
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This is only true if the person believes it is true. Believe me, I would know. Not that I am in that situation that you just described, I am not. But I do have my own obstacles to face, and my own crosses to bear, you either deal with it and pull yourself up by the bootraps or you don't.

blackjack007 is correct. Nothing in life is handed to you, and whining and complaining about it won't help, as everyone is concerned with themselves and their own reality tunnel of existence. But you can work hard, it helps a lot if you are either intelligent and/or smart, and there is the "luck" factor.

Jimmy Jam
 
Quote from jwecme:

I think your getting a bit off the topic. I am trying to make a sensible discussion with an outsiders opinion, which can often be useful and create debate.
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What off topic? I used your pattern of "I am troubled by the attitude of lots of people on here as to the setting of a decent level of minimum wage. In the UK we..."

Who are you to be troubled by what other societies do? If it works for you, marvelous. That doesn't grant you the sovereignty to correct what works for others. After all, is England the bastion of cultural perfection? Are you free of the poor? Got unemployment there? Anyone suffering?

Attend to your own ills, and stop whining (sorry, being "troubled") about what your neighbors do...
 
Quote from jwecme:

Have you ever tried to retrain on minimum wage whilst supporting a family. Your argument does not really add up. It is great in theory but does not hold up in practice. You would have to work such long hours just to feed kids you would have no time to improve your skills even if you wanted to, you are trapped.
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Why do they have kids? Ah I get it while others were getting skills they were having kids. And who the hell makes minimum wage anyway. When I was 17 a deli owner was paying me 2 dollars above minimum wage. I also caddied at a gold club and made over $200 a day carrying 2 bags and hustling around marking balls etc for 2 summers. Don't say it was a job for only white people, there were plenty of blacks there.
 
Everyone has to pay in life.

You pay early by getting an education while you were young. As you getting older, the desk job and the hi paying job are equivalent to the hi interest that you get in life. You missed the partying days because there were not too many of them but you enjoying the fruits of your early hard work with a much hier ROR.

You pay later by having kids, staying out late, partying while you were young. As you get older, low skills/wages are waiting for you and you curse the world thinking life is not fair.

Kids, don't blame society for your lame life. Look in the mirror.
 
OP, seriously? Posing such a question on a web site dedicated to people who rely on a free unfettered market (ie demand and supply) for their living what do you expect?

Personally I would prefer a raise of the poverty level than a minimum wage, such that if you didn't meet a certain income level you would get a tax credit with a work incentive built in, ie the more of your income below the poverty level that came from your own work the higher your tax credit. For example, if poverty level is $20K and you make nothing you get $20K. If you make $10K you get a tax credit of $12.5K, if you make $15K you get a tax credit of $10K, and so on. If you make $19K you get a tax credit of $6K (max is $25K) and if you opt to take part of that tax credit as an education voucher such as for your child to go to the school of your choice or for your own education then you get an even larger incentive amount. As an incentive to get off the government tit all earned income between 20K and 30K is taxed at 0% (thats if we still have a tax code as I would dearly like to get rid of income tax and go to a consumption tax, in the event of no income ta you would get a education voucher or a contribution to your kid's 529.

What I would also like to see is a program that incentivized parents to have their kids graduate high school (actually each grade in high school). If you child passes the grade level exam you get a tax credit, if they fail (obviously without mitigating circumstances which would be worked out at the school level) you get a tax penalty. Its not the teachers who need to be incentivized but the parents (well some parents apparently though none that I know personally). I teach my child far more at home than she ever gets at school despite her going to an expensive private school and it is obvious that relying on the school to educate your child is a gamble in this day and age. So incentivize the parents to see their kids pass each grade and then watch school standards improve as the parents start demanding a better education for their children.
 
Quote from jd7419:

Why do they have kids? Ah I get it while others were getting skills they were having kids. And who the hell makes minimum wage anyway. When I was 17 a deli owner was paying me 2 dollars above minimum wage. I also caddied at a gold club and made over $200 a day carrying 2 bags and hustling around marking balls etc for 2 summers. Don't say it was a job for only white people, there were plenty of blacks there.
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Exactly. What we have right now is a perfect situation. A non-binding minimum wage. With the exception of 16-year old high school kids working 20 hours a week at McDonalds, nobody earns minimum wage unless they are stupid or too proud to perform work that is "beneath them".

Our current minimum wage prevents any gross abuse of workers. It is very unfair to only pay someone $3/hour and I would argue that anyone willing to work at that rate is incapable of functioning on their own. For this reason it is nice that we have a minimum wage in the $5.50 range.

The effective minimum wage in this country is about $7 an hour right now. I live in the 3rd lowest paying state in the nation and my company starts temp workers at $8.50/hour. We are currently at about 2.5% unemployment. Anyone who wants a job making at least $9/hour can get one. Anyone who can only afford $350-400/month for rent can find a place over here.

Almost every company here pays for schooling for any employee who wants to attend college.

We have a great situation going. Why would we want to screw it up by locking on MW at $10/hour?
 
Quote from EricP:

It's a good thing Churchill didn't share your views, or you'd be speaking German. [/B]
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What is it in your experience of the British that makes you think we'd have picked up the language after 60 years? :)

Also damnit, why do you chaps say "could care less" when you mean "couldn't care less"? Funny quirk of language that.
 
Quote from frugi:


Also damnit, why do you chaps say "could care less" when you mean "couldn't care less"? Funny quirk of language that.
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The difference between the American language and the English language. Live with it. /shrug/
 
The illegals are the problem. They come over here and do any job for peanuts so college kids from normal homes can't work there way up by doing odd jobs. Setting a minimum wage doesn't make it good for business though because people will just punch a clock as opposed for getting paid to do what there supposed to do and there's no more patriotic Americans anymore most are spoiled brats. I don't think there should be a minium wage because if there's a person willing to do something the employer aught to be able to choose that person that will get the job done most efficiently providing they come from this country so we don't get people flooding in from a 3rd world country like Mexico. It's not that big of a deal. You want to get paid good get an education and you'll be in demand. As far as the illegals are concerned I think they should be put in chain gangs and not get paid anything for doing what ever county projects need to get done such as working on highways without collecting social wellfare.
 
Quote from jwecme:

I am troubled by the attitude of lots of people on here as to the setting of a decent level of minimum wage. In the UK we currently have a minimum wage of around 10 dollars an hour with universal health care based on need not ability to pay.

The Uk's unemployment rate is considerably lower than the US's as we actually count long term unemployed unlike the US, so I cannot see any argument against protecting the most vulnerable rather than seeing how much you can screw out of the downtrodden for an extra few cents profit for business owners.

PLease do not tell me either that the market is the best way to solve everything, we have strict market rules already in the UK and US for abbusive market based practices such as monopoly prevention and environmental damage etc. i see paying someone less than 10 bucks an hour as abusing them.
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What does the UK know about running a country like the Unitied States? Comparing an Island to a large diverse country. There's no comparison. Crap isn't it your country that took away money from the people with the Bank of England? In fact your economy has collapsed before to have to be bailed out in emergency funding from the US and other countries. There's no abuse if someone will work harder than you or you don't want to work or can't do the type of work because you are not educated. If it were left up to you we wouldn't have distribution hubs that make our large society run. People need health care because they don't take care of themselfs. Look at all the drinkers, smokers, and drug users. Chances are you live a long health life if you eat right and take care of your body. People expect the government to do everything for them. I'm for less government and a challenging business environement. That's were you find your place and you earn what you get.
 
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