Raising the minimum wage won't help

[The Grand Nudger]

An employer doesn't hire your lame ass to keep you fed and watered (as you obviously believe). They hire people TO MAKE MONEY!

Yes, they very much do and very much are, but the workers...well...not so much.  Maybe employees also don't work to feed and water their employers, but to make money?

No problem - START YOUR OWN BUSINESS - and you can pay all the slackjawed idiots that show up looking for a job top wages.... Don't forget a 401k and comprehensive medical......

You'll be rich in no time.....

Having a wage advantage over your competitors is the best way to hire and retain, yes. You already know this, ofc, with your extensive expertise in the junkyard bidness.

[onlinebiker]

No problem - START YOUR OWN BUSINESS - and you can pay all the slackjawed idiots that show up looking for a job top wages.... Don't forget a 401k and comprehensive medical......

Long term, those things - higher wages, better benefits, etc - are a net plus for a business. Employees who are paid and perked properly tend to be happier and give better service. It also reduces tardiness, absenteeism and (most importantly) turnover, and attracts better applicants. Given that it costs in the neighbourhood of $5K to add a single new employee, it’s in the boss’s best interest to make the available job as attractive as possible.

Yes, companies hire people to make money. Not surprisingly, people go to work for the same reason.

Boru

You are talking about people for which minimum wage is not an issue - the well educated and motivated.

Until of course you raise minimum wage so high that it puts the slackjawed idiots into the same pay scale.

Idiots and slackers should not be well compensated 

You pay a doorstop, doorstop wages.

Why are these people having trouble with that concept?

[The Grand Nudger]

The disposition of the workforce is an irrelevant concern. If you need employees, that's a requirement of your business plan, and you'll have to get them from the available pool by offering some advantage to the employee for trading your necessary labor as their elective job.

The whole village could be idiots - but you still need five of them to profit making burgers off the idiots.

Would it surprise you to know that americans have become better educated and more productive year over year over year? It's a persistent generational trend. Today, a better educated and more productive workforce is making less, not asking for more.

[HappySkeptic]

I presume that OB assumes that the magic hand of the free market sets wages, and this shouldn't be tampered with. If someone makes 100 million a year, its because they are worth that. If someone makes $7/hour, that's all they are worth.

But the "free market" is a mythological creature. There is only power. A poor person has to eat. They either get welfare, or they get a job. The right-wing hates welfare, so its work for starvation wages, or else actually starve.

A minimum wage establishes some balance of power between the rich and powerful, and the poor.

Sure, there are consequences to any action. A minimum wage might mean that an employer decides to buy an automatic burger-flipper instead of hire some kid. That isn't a bad thing necessarily. Phasing out low-productivity jobs leads to a higher net productivity for the workforce. Its only bad if those are the only jobs possible in an economy.

Employers will adjust to the new normal. If it is mandated everywhere, no employer is disadvantaged. Inflation will barely take an uptick, as the wages of the poor aren't what drives inflation.

[Rev. Rye]

Until of course you raise minimum wage so high that it puts the slackjawed idiots into the same pay scale.

Idiots and slackers should not be well compensated 

You pay a doorstop, doorstop wages.

Why are these people having trouble with that concept?

Yes, we do agree that more skilled workers should be paid more than the unskilled. Thing is, I (and most of the people here) also believe the unskilled workers still should have the minimum amount of pay to allow them to support themselves.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Until of course you raise minimum wage so high that it puts the slackjawed idiots into the same pay scale.

Idiots and slackers should not be well compensated 

You pay a doorstop, doorstop wages.

Why are these people having trouble with that concept?

The so-called "doorstop " should still have a living wage. But nice job dehumanizing people and confirming our earlier beliefs about you.

In other words, a disposition should not equal poverty.

[Foxaèr]

But the "free market" is a mythological creature.  There is only power.  

Indeed.

[The Grand Nudger]

Until of course you raise minimum wage so high that it puts the slackjawed idiots into the same pay scale.

Idiots and slackers should not be well compensated 

You pay a doorstop, doorstop wages.

Why are these people having trouble with that concept?

Yes, we do agree that more skilled workers should be paid more than the unskilled. Thing is, I (and most of the people here) also believe the unskilled workers still should have the minimum amount of pay to allow them to support themselves.

Well, if we want someone to keep picking up our trash, we cant tell the trashman that his job doesn't qualify as a living.

Certainly more so, if we're junkyard operators selling 20 year old saturns.  The guy who says ridiculous shit like that...can go fully fuck himself.  He's the useless taker, not the burger flipper.  He couldn't afford a fucking burger unless someone else had been convinced to sell their labor at an unreprenstatively low price.

If I'm not being clear.  Biker, you...are a trash merchant.  The lowest of the low.  The burger flippers you deride are your betters - full stop.  You, and not them, should have less..because you, and not them...are worthless.  I'd pay for a burger, and do.....but I'd never buy your junk.

If the trashmen of the world all quit tomorrow, that would be bad. If the idiots who maintain saturns all quit tomorrow, no one would notice. Biker is the very thing, the very man, that he thinks should be ignored..and, for once, I think he's right. He should go fuck himself and starve to death. His children, if we're so unfortunate that he had any, can follow him to the grave. One day, we'll be rid of anything like him - by default...and at his own insistence

-chefs kiss-

[The Architect Of Fate]

Yes, we do agree that more skilled workers should be paid more than the unskilled. Thing is, I (and most of the people here) also believe the unskilled workers still should have the minimum amount of pay to allow them to support themselves.

Well, if we want someone to keep picking up our trash, we cant tell the trashman that his job doesn't qualify as a living.

Certainly more so, if we're junkyard operators selling 20 year old saturns.  The guy who says ridiculous shit like that...can go fully fuck himself.  He's the useless taker, not the burger flipper.  He couldn't afford a fucking burger unless someone else had been convinced to sell their labor at an unreprenstatively low price.

If I'm not being clear.  Biker, you...are a trash merchant.  The lowest of the low.  The burger flippers you deride are your betters - full stop.  You, and not them, should have less..because you, and not them...are worthless.  I'd pay for a burger, and do.....but I'd never buy your junk.

If the trashmen of the world all quit tomorrow, that would be bad.  If the idiots who maintain saturns all quit tomorrow, no one would notice.   Biker is the very thing, the very man, that he thinks should be ignored..and, for once, I think he's right.  He should go fuck himself and starve to death.  His children, if we're so unfortunate that he had any, can follow him to the grave.  One day, we'll be rid of anything like him - by default.

[Abaddon_ire]

No problem - START YOUR OWN BUSINESS - and you can pay all the slackjawed idiots that show up looking for a job top wages.... Don't forget a 401k and comprehensive medical......

Long term, those things - higher wages, better benefits, etc - are a net plus for a business. Employees who are paid and perked properly tend to be happier and give better service. It also reduces tardiness, absenteeism and (most importantly) turnover, and attracts better applicants. Given that it costs in the neighbourhood of $5K to add a single new employee, it’s in the boss’s best interest to make the available job as attractive as possible.

Yes, companies hire people to make money. Not surprisingly, people go to work for the same reason.

Boru

Over the course of a long career, I have hired and fired many. Always on merit. I could have gone the min wage route with plenty. I never have. And it has always been a win to avoid that BS. 

The problem is that OLB thinks that other people are mere things to be used and abused at will. I and most others here think other people are exactly that. Other people. PEOPLE. With lives of there own that they are simply trying to live as best they can manage.

To put an example, at one time, I had an employee, hard worker, well above min wage and what not. Word filtered up to those in the so called upper echelons that his mother was at deaths door while he was working like mad on the production line. So, we summoned him to the office and asked him why on earth was he here, he should have been in the hospital at his mother's side.

I, and my business partners told him a few truths.

1. You need to be at your dying mother's side.
2. We will pay you in full for whatever time.
3. Your job sill still be here however it pans out.
4. If it takes us rolling up shirtsleeves and filling in while you are missing, we will do it, the company or job is not your life.
5. Why are you still here? Get thee hence to where you need to be. 

Thirty years later, the guy is still around and I am glad of it. He would have a good shout at best employee ever.


OLB would have chucked him under a bus and enjoyed it.