Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2013 16:27:05 GMT -5
No, don't think so. If that were the case (that each were paid according to his need rather than according to the worth of the job), then the dependent children of self-sufficient parents would never be paid at their first jobs. I wouldn't have received my $5.15/hour at the Ames or the grocery store, because I didn't have a family to support, and also didn't really need to support myself. I was just doing it for extra spending money and savings for my future. Umm...The worth of the job should literally be a living wage. Full-time or part-time you really should be making a... *sighs* Okay, lemme stop. I see where this is going. I'm really not in the mood.
|
|
Sparkybob
King Koopa
I have a status?
Posts: 10,992
|
Post by Sparkybob on Oct 14, 2013 16:47:50 GMT -5
I agree that the "if you don't like your job, then find a new one" argument is flawed and frankly kind of boorish, but there have to be better ways to ask for a raise than storming a corporate meeting. Honestly, this just reeks of a staged maneuver to utilize a patsy to shine an even brighter spotlight on the plight of minimum-wage workers around the country more than it does one woman's good-natured attempt to find a better life for herself and her family. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but the way this is phrased seems to suggest than having empathy for people in the same situation and trying to bring attention to them all is somehow a negative. The answers isn't simply to raise the minimum wage since some unintended consequences occur when you do. Yeah, poor people would have more money which they would most likely put back into the economy, helping us out of recession while also making sure that the poorest in society are able to support themselves and stay out of poverty. Kind of like the whole way we got out of the Great Depression. It's a short term band-aid to the real problem. The problem with just raising the minimum wage (I'm ignoring the whole business will start laying people off argument since it's getting too political but there are some small merits too it) is that business in response will hike their prices up. This will either happen in 2 ways, The more likely is A) Business seeing their input cost have shot up tremendously are immediately forced to increase their prices in order to keep their profit margins the same. or with business that don't employ a huge minimum wage staff B) Business will keep their prices the same for a business quarter but then they realized that people have more money to spend now, so in response they increase their prices due to supply and demand. I hope you see the issue with this. While the poor people may received more money, due to the country wide inflation the value of their dollar deceases. This makes it more expensive to live in America. Then if you noticed the middle class people are screwed here. Their salaries won't necessarily go up, but the price of everything around them goes up so they are casualties in this proposal. Then after a certain amount of time people will complain that the minimum wage needs to be raised again due to it not being enough to live on. Then the cycle restarts itself. The right answer is lowering the cost of education so that most citizens don't have to take these minimum wage jobs as a career option. Have more people get educated, more jobs will be available of the living wage variety.
|
|
Mac
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Sigs/Avatars cannot exceed 1MB
Posts: 16,502
|
Post by Mac on Oct 14, 2013 18:04:20 GMT -5
Maybe I'm just crazy, but I thought the entire reason for a minimum wage initially was that it was the least amount of money someone could pay you while still being able to support yourself and your family with it. The bare minimum, thus the name. How did we get to the point where people are up in here justifying a person not being able to afford the bare essentials because her job is "easy"? Just because you don't think much of her job doesn't mean she shouldn't be making a living wage, 'cause I look at it this way: if the people in the jobs you love to shit on actually get a living wage, then it's just common sense that those awesome jobs you currently occupy would be paying you above and beyond a living wage, right? I just don't see any downside at all to them getting a wage to live on, because the so-called minimum wage these days? Sure, people can cut a lot of shit out and maybe get lucky to make it work at $7.25/hour, but I'm telling y'all that's just surviving for a lot of people and just surviving is a ****ed up way to live. If you raise the minimum wage to a "realistic living wage" you almost automatically start a cycle you can't climb out of. For example, if you upped minimum wage to $15 an hour you've made everything more expensive. Imagine what this means to Mcdonalds bottom line, You're raising the wages of everyone from the people who pick crops to the people who clean the toilets,package goods, put together boxes, handle food, load and offload trucks and serve the food. Take with that the people who through promotions and raises have worked their way up to $13-$14 an hour. They're either going to be bumped up to minimum wage or in a fair market see their salaries increase at a commensurate level with the new minimum wage. So now the cost of doing business has increased for Mcdonalds, and pretty much everywhere else. The end result is they'll need to raise prices, and the new minimum wage no longer looks like a "living wage" and the cycle continues. There's a reason a dollar doesn't buy what it used to and leaving politics out of it, one reason is the increased cost of goods and labor that go into a business.
|
|
Dean-o
Grimlock
Haha we're having fun Maggle!
Posts: 13,865
|
Post by Dean-o on Oct 14, 2013 18:26:16 GMT -5
Sounds like a typical American who thinks things should be handed out to her.
I don't know her, but if she told me she was working at a job for TEN years, and the best she can do is $8.25, she either isn't smart enough to find another better paying job, get promoted within McDonald's, or no one else would hire her.
It is not her job's responsibility to help her pay for her children, which she obviously can't afford in the first place.
|
|
Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 28,961
|
Post by Sephiroth on Oct 14, 2013 18:45:22 GMT -5
Maybe I am just idealistic, but I don't buy into the notion of poverty as being so e sort of punishment. I also don't buy into the idea that poverty can be overcome so easily. As much as we love the underdog story not everyone is Rocky Balboa.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2013 18:59:22 GMT -5
Sounds like a typical American who thinks things should be handed out to her. I appreciate you informing us of your troll status right from the jump, it saves a lot of time.
|
|
|
Post by Red Impact on Oct 14, 2013 19:08:28 GMT -5
I just don't see any downside at all to them getting a wage to live on, because the so-called minimum wage these days? Sure, people can cut a lot of shit out and maybe get lucky to make it work at $7.25/hour, but I'm telling y'all that's just surviving for a lot of people and just surviving is a ****ed up way to live. It's a nice idea in theory, but it would only work if costs don't increase. McDonald's (and most others) will increase costs to pass it on, either before it occurs or shortly afterwards, so any improvement brought on by increased minimum wage will be, at best, temporary. It's why cost of living is higher in places where wages are higher. They just adjust prices to match wage levels.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2013 19:16:35 GMT -5
Again, y'all can keep quoting me but I'm done. I ain't trying to get banned.
|
|
Dean-o
Grimlock
Haha we're having fun Maggle!
Posts: 13,865
|
Post by Dean-o on Oct 14, 2013 19:18:37 GMT -5
Sounds like a typical American who thinks things should be handed out to her. I appreciate you informing us of your troll status right from the jump, it saves a lot of time. I admit, I did phrase that wrong, and I apologize if I offended anybody, as I am a proud American myself, and I DON'T believe everybody is like that. But I do believe personal responsibility is somewhat of a lost art these days.
|
|
|
Post by angryfan on Oct 14, 2013 19:20:16 GMT -5
I feel for her, and hre's why. I've been in the job force for 14 years now, and the most I ever made was as a government employee, some 13.50 an hour. I have a BS and am finishing an MS, did the undergrad work with a 3.79 GPA, and though it sounds egotistic as hell, I'll put myself with anyone mentally.
My field is social science, criminology, and psychology. Pretty wide spectrum, and yet every job I am offered that pays a living wage, where I can be somewhat comfortable and not live in a rat hole, turns me down because I can't drive. I say "I don't drive because my eyes are destroyed" and they say "well, your vision is better than 20/100 corrected so legally you can't use that".
So I take what I can get, 10 and 11 dollar an hour jobs, scrape by after I pay back student loans and keep a roof over my head, and I have employers tell me how "fortunate" I am to have the job I do.
I get her complaint, totally, but sadly we can't raise the wage since the company would just jack up prices to offset the difference in profit margin, and no way are the outsourced jobs coming back.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2013 19:36:51 GMT -5
I read a study the other week that said if they raised wages for McDonalds employees the cost that would be passed on to the customer wasn't even a dollar. Yet I wonder how much the CEOs get every year. I'm not just talking about a salary but a bonus and wage increase. You know it's pretty nice.
|
|
|
Post by Bootista on Oct 14, 2013 19:38:52 GMT -5
By the way you just put President in the title, I assumed the employee got fired by ripping Obama
|
|
|
Post by HMARK Center on Oct 14, 2013 20:02:28 GMT -5
I read a study the other week that said if they raised wages for McDonalds employees the cost that would be passed on to the customer wasn't even a dollar. Yet I wonder how much the CEOs get every year. I'm not just talking about a salary but a bonus and wage increase. You know it's pretty nice. That's true: particularly in a place like the fast food industry, the rise in prices would be very minimal. As you say, most very large companies can pretty easily cover the extra costs with some restructuring at the corporate level, but then we'd likely enter a discussion about oversight and regulations that I don't think would be good to start given forum rules. And to reiterate, I'm not sure all of us have a grasp on just how unavailable living wage jobs are in many sections of the country. It's difficult enough out there for people with college degrees who are overqualified and don't get hired based on that...now imagine living in an area with a too-high high school dropout rate or a low rate of college education, and think about the boatloads of jobs that used to be available for people in those situations that simply don't exist anymore. You're basically stuck looking through the service sector for work, and unfortunately many stores that could offer better wages simply don't exist in a number of these communities. "But couldn't they drive there?", one may ask, to which they'd get an answer "No, a ton of these people don't own/can't afford cars, and there's very little mass transportation options out of their communities". That's a whole other can of worms that might be risky getting too deep into discussion over, but it's been a huge issue in America for decades upon decades now. By the by, if what she did was staged in some way or whatever, well...I really don't see a problem with that.
|
|
|
Post by Red Impact on Oct 14, 2013 20:08:43 GMT -5
I'd have to see the study and it's authors before believing it on it's face, because there's a lot more than just the cashiers and fry cooks that are going to be affected and you have to see how they came to their conclusions. And even if the cost increases at McDonald's aren't much, you have a lot of places that aren't fast food, a lot of smaller businesses that have very thin margins to work with anyways that are, and a lot of different sectors that are going to have to increase their costs just a little, which will eat up much of the pay raise in the first place.
And that's not taking the basic supply-demand dynamics and how costs always tend to rise even if they don't have to, just due to an increase in the money supply.
|
|
|
Post by Baldobomb-22-OH-MAN!!! on Oct 14, 2013 20:24:27 GMT -5
I'd have to see the study and it's authors before believing it on it's face, because there's a lot more than just the cashiers and fry cooks that are going to be affected and you have to see how they came to their conclusions. And even if the cost increases at McDonald's aren't much, you have a lot of places that aren't fast food, a lot of smaller businesses that have very thin margins to work with anyways that are, and a lot of different sectors that are going to have to increase their costs just a little, which will eat up much of the pay raise in the first place. And that's not taking the basic supply-demand dynamics and how costs always tend to rise even if they don't have to, just due to an increase in the money supply. I always figured minimum wage should be tiered based on how much money the company makes. it'd also take the "well mom and pop businesses would be crushed" argument out of the equation.
|
|
Sparkybob
King Koopa
I have a status?
Posts: 10,992
|
Post by Sparkybob on Oct 14, 2013 20:28:53 GMT -5
I read a study the other week that said if they raised wages for McDonalds employees the cost that would be passed on to the customer wasn't even a dollar. Yet I wonder how much the CEOs get every year. I'm not just talking about a salary but a bonus and wage increase. You know it's pretty nice. I haven't seen the article but was the price increase being talked about in direct response to the minimum wage increase? because that's not telling the whole story. The study might ignore the fact that large cooperation's tend to have contracts with their suppliers so they won't feel the true impact of higher input cost until those contracts are over and it's time to make a new one. Also from what you provided the studies seems to ignore that inflation will effect every business. So now your grocery bill will go up, basic supplies will eventually go up too. And if your wages didn't increase then you got screwed pretty badly. I talked about the CEO and upper management a little. All I say is that their is a reason why they got all that money, that's how the business values them. Their not as replaceable as a McDonald's cashier hence they get a much better wage. Makes sense.
|
|
|
Post by Ishmeal Loves Kaseyhausen on Oct 14, 2013 20:32:14 GMT -5
Here is the real question. Why have children if you feel you're not making enough money to properly support them?
|
|
|
Post by Red Impact on Oct 14, 2013 20:33:59 GMT -5
I'd have to see the study and it's authors before believing it on it's face, because there's a lot more than just the cashiers and fry cooks that are going to be affected and you have to see how they came to their conclusions. And even if the cost increases at McDonald's aren't much, you have a lot of places that aren't fast food, a lot of smaller businesses that have very thin margins to work with anyways that are, and a lot of different sectors that are going to have to increase their costs just a little, which will eat up much of the pay raise in the first place. And that's not taking the basic supply-demand dynamics and how costs always tend to rise even if they don't have to, just due to an increase in the money supply. I always figured minimum wage should be tiered based on how much money the company makes. it'd also take the "well mom and pop businesses would be crushed" argument out of the equation. It wouldn't really take it out of the equation, it may even make it worse. From a worker's standpoint you'd have no reason whatsoever to work for a mom and pop shop, since you'd make so much more working for fast food or Walmart or so forth. At that point, you're only consigning people who couldn't get a job at a chain to the independent shops, and they'd flee as soon as a job opens up. And since those minimum wage jobs at big chains tend to employ a lot more people, you'd still have the potential issue of increasing costs across the board to contend with it. Only now only those Walmart and McDonald's employees at those chains get to maybe break even, those who work at small shops or less successful companies are worse off because they don't get the same pay increase, but their grocery bills have gone up to reflect the fact that the places they shop are charging more. It's a complicated situation, and I don't think there's an easy solution.
|
|
|
Post by DoubleDare on Oct 14, 2013 20:38:15 GMT -5
While what she gets paid is bad...its much worse that shes been at McDonalds for 10 years and from what it seems is still just a clerk/reg employee there. She should be looking for something else, even if it pays around the same, there is surely better opportunities out there. I began my first job 10 years ago (May 2003) and didn't go to college and I currently have a full time job doing data entry (worked at a movie theater for 6 years, census in 2010 then a supermarket til this past july). You just gotta keep on trying!
|
|
BigBadZ
Grimlock
The Rumors Are All True
Posts: 13,923
|
Post by BigBadZ on Oct 14, 2013 20:59:23 GMT -5
I put the photo in spoiler tags due to size but I think it's part of the problem. A job as a receptionist who will answer phone calls, greet visitors, and schedule appointments that you need to have a 4 year degree for. Of course not all jobs are like this but it's becoming more and more frequent. People are being pushed into college to get starter jobs and we'll never be able to pay it off AND the cost of college is always getting bigger. There is nothing more frustrating than being in an interview and being told you won't get the entry level job because you don't have a degree, and the person interviewing you admitted they didn't have a degree either. {Spoiler}
|
|