Poll: Minimum Wage

[Stylesjl]

Everybody should at the very least have a living wage when they work. No ifs or buts

So i support minimum wage its one of the few checks againest the immense power of greedy capitalists

 

[Tulkas12]

Everybody should at the very least have a living wage when they work. No ifs or buts

So i support minimum wage its one of the few checks againest the immense power of greedy capitalists

*sigh

Everyone should get a sports car and a 4 bedroom house too I presume?

 

[Archbob]

I say adjust it to inflation. We had no minimum wage in the early 1900s and as a result most people lived in slums, slaved more than 12 hours a day and earned jack squat. I do not trust in an absolute "free" market.

 

[GenMarshall]

Keep the minumum wage as well as raise it too keep up with inflation.

 

[ainwood]

I think the minimum wage should be set at 1,000,000 an hour, so that everyone will be millionaires!

 

[Perfection]

Maybe , but you are telling that group of people that they can never be employed , ever . You are dooming them to perpetual unemployment , which is the grossest of injustices .

You really aren't. You'd have to be extraordinarily useless not to be able to gain and hold a minimum wage job. If you can hold a broom, you can hold a minimum wage job. The only people I can think of who might have problem finding them are certain convicted felons.

We don't need it anymore, so get rid of it.

Now that's an interesting assertation. Perhaps so, it does smell of nanny-stateism. Ultimately though, I'm not versed enough in the subject to make an informed decision.

I say adjust it to inflation. We had no minimum wage in the early 1900s and as a result most people lived in slums, slaved more than 12 hours a day and earned jack squat. I do not trust in an absolute "free" market.

Care to solidify that correlation with a causal relationship?

Keep the minumum wage as well as raise it too keep up with inflation.

Wy?

 

[Ecclesiastes]

Im only fifteen, but I have a job, 14 hours a day, five days a week moving fifteen(ironic) pound engine cores from point A to point B in the hot sun all day. Ive been at it for a while now, long enough to know that anybody who can dedicate eight hours a day from nine to five year after year is deserving at the least to live comfortably. I say raise minimum wage so that people can live comfortably off of it.

 

[classical_hero]

A raise in min wage means a few will get better wages, but many will be laid off.

which is better for the economy?

That is absolute bull. I m surprised that you actually have bought into that idea.

 

[Mise]

Might be worth noting that in the most recent country to adopt a minimum wage (the United Kingdom in 1999 which set it much higher than in the US) the following happened:

Unemployment dropped
Inflation went down
Productivity went up

That's very interesting. Thanks for pointing it out!

 

[ComradeDavo]

I believe everyone should be paid a minimum wage that they live off, as in be able to pay bills, eat and other basic things. Anything less is in effect exploitation. In the Uk I back calls from some of the Labour party to raise it by £2, to £7.05.

People spending their money is good for the economy! So many people are buiness minded, forgetting that it's peopel spending their cash that buisness relies upon. Hotpoint has shown how the Uk is an exmaple of a minimum wage that had really helped the economy here.

 

[skadistic]

Min. wage jobs are NOT living jobs. If you think getting paid around $15 an hour (a living wage) for flipping burgers or stacking shelves at a big box store your a fool. Min. wage jobs are ment for school kids, entry level workers and other part time workers. There are no skilled jobs paying min. wage. Even many unskilled jobs better then min. wage. The bottem line is if you want to make more money work harder and get ahead on your own merits. To think anyone should just pay you alot of money for doing nothing is stupid and will hold you back.

 

[Veritass]

If the minimum wage worked as advertised and didn't cause price inflation, we could just set the minimum wage to $100,000 per year and everyone would be well off. This does not work.

The new term "living wage" is just marketing applied to the old term "minimum wage" to make it sound more plausible. It is similar to renaming "swamps" and "jungles" to "coastal wetlands" and "rainforests," because no one wanted to save "swamps" and "jungles."

It is impossible to state what standard of living is to be supported by a "living wage." When I first started out on my own, I had to have roommates because I could not afford my own place. Was I below the "living wage," or did I just have to make trade-offs? I could have worked more hours, but I was working and trying to put myself through college. If the "living wage" is too high, what incentive is there to grow your own productivity and better yourself?

On the flip side, if you remove the minimum wage and let it float downward, you will have to reform the welfare system. As the minimum wage approaches the welfare "wage," there will no incentive to work at all; it will just be easier to go on state assistance. I think this is why the new minimum wage "worked" in England; it created an incentive to get off of state assistance.

As with all such discussions, there are many factors and consequences involved. Remember that for every complex scenario, there is a simple and elegant solution that is wrong.

 

[ComradeDavo]

Min. wage jobs are NOT living jobs. If you think getting paid around $15 an hour (a living wage) for flipping burgers or stacking shelves at a big box store your a fool. Min. wage jobs are ment for school kids, entry level workers and other part time workers. There are no skilled jobs paying min. wage. Even many unskilled jobs better then min. wage. The bottem line is if you want to make more money work harder and get ahead on your own merits. To think anyone should just pay you alot of money for doing nothing is stupid and will hold you back.

To think that there are skilled jobs for everyone capable demonstrates lack of economic knowledge. To think that 'unskilled' jobs are just for school kids or part time workers is foolish as well. There are simply not enough 'skilled labour' jobs around, so alot of people have to do full time work in low skill jobs, and they should not be punished financially for it, they should get a living wage.

What your basically arguing is survival of the fittest and creating a two-tier class.

 

[Winner]

Abolish, it works against employment and harm the poor people, who can't find a job simply because the employers won't pay them so much for work that isn't worth it. They will employ illegals instead, who will work for a half of that money.

 

[ComradeDavo]

Abolish, it works against employment and harm the poor people, who can't find a job simply because the employers won't pay them so much for work that isn't worth it. They will employ illegals instead, who will work for a half of that money.

You speak of a minority of cases as if they are the majority.......

 

[.Shane.]

The idea of a "living wage" is measureable. Its not an arbitrary number. Typically its tied to the poverty line or some other kind of socio-economic indexer.

 

[De Lorimier]

If minimum wage should not be living jobs, then you might want to stop by every grocery/convenient stores, restaurants, malls, farms, and a number of other places and tell the millions of people working those jobs for minimum wage that their forty hours a week shouldn't be enough for them to make a living. Sometimes I wonder where some of you spend your days. A bubble for some, fantasy land for others. Just a few seem to understand the actual reality, not just the interesting and debatable theories. In the meantime, regular people struggle, work and try to make a living. To take their seven bucks an hour away in the name of competitiveness is ******ed.

 

[JerichoHill]

Unlike you, I have absolutely no faith in the "market". As much as we all hope and would like to think that this market can regulate itself and treat employees properly, the truth is, it doesn't and never will if we don't make sure it does. Minimum wage is one of the tools we have to make our economic system liveable for regular people. It should be high enough to make rent and pay minimal bills and groceries. Decent standards of living should be the goal for everyone who's willing to go out and work.

But that's just coming from someone who actually works for his money and for his rent and bills. I'm sure our resident teenagers living with mom and dad will have more to say on the subject than me.

I work for my living, and disagree entirely with your post.
But then again, I am an economist and just happen to understand that creating an artificial price floor raises costs above the board.

However, the minimum wage does not noticeably, if anything, increase unemployment, as it exists today.

I am a trader. I ask only for what is the value of which I produce.

 

[RameNoodle]

I said other because I think that minimum wage is just something that is there to keep people from aspiring to a better job. If it were lowered, then it would give people a reason to work for a better job, instead of just being happy with how it is. If it were higher, it would be bad for big business, and if companies began to lose money because of the fact that they are paying all their employees more due to higher minimum wage, then there would be less jobs for people to get anyways. Basically, there is no one good thing to do to minimum wage.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Everybody should at the very least have a living wage when they work. No ifs or buts

So i support minimum wage its one of the few checks againest the immense power of greedy capitalists

If everyone should be granted a living wage, what incentive do they have to work more than the bare minimum if they are already given a wage to live off of?