Federal Workers Min. Wage raised to $10.10

There are people working full-time minimum wage jobs, and cannot make ends meet. There are single parents working 60-80 hours a week at minimum wage, and can not raise their children without government assistance.
 
10.50 an hour is not a ridiculous amount of money. It's $21000 per year. You could get by on that much money, not comfortably, but it's possible. You can't get by on 16k/year. It's just not possible. People need to pay rent, utilities, buy clothes, eat food, and get to work. That shit adds up.

I come from a somewhat privileged background, and I realize that people work hard to make 100k+, but there is NO WAY, they work 5 times harder than the lady working 60hours/week just to put food on her families table.
 
Not making an argument here, but have you ever thought that government was the problem and not the solution?
 
You realize the prices gold, is determined by 12 people that live in London called the London fix. They could wake up tomorrow and say gold is worth 200$.
 
haha you have no idea. read my post above.

fuck the government. but also fuck the corporations like walmart who treat their employees like shit. we need to cause severe economic damage to these companies. I would rather see it done as a movement by the people away from that crap and towards locally owned businesses.

However in the time being, before the revolution, I would like to see people working for a decent quality of life. So I support laws like this. Just like I support public health care. At least as long as the government upholds laws to protect the pharmaceutical industry.
 
Walmart would not be able to treat their employees as they do without government aide. They purposely pay just under what qualifies one for assistance. They even have a HR member who walks you through the steps of gaining assistance.

I believe people would not accept a job if they weren't able to live off of it. So it you cannot live off of a job at walmart one wouldnt take it, and if no one took a job at walmart they would have no employees and would cease to exist.
 
There are people in Africa that live off cow urine and crickets and would give anything to work 60-80 hours per week for minimum wage.

Where does your argument end? Like I said before, should everybody be entitled to drive a lomborghini? You can't just decide "people are entitled to a certain standard of living", which is what all of your arguments have been for raising minimum wage.
 
No. If we stopped buying from wal Mart they would cease to exist. But for the time being, it would be nice to see wal Mart paying their employees, not tax dollars.
 
So why is $10.10 such a great number but $11.10 isn't? There is no basis for $10.10 per hour just like there is no basis for $1,000 per hour is my point. Both of them are just numbers thrown out there with no statistical or mathematic reasoning.

And does anybody else find it funny that he hung all you private sector workers out to dry while saying basically government workers can't live on less than $10.10! LMAO at all you McDonald's workers that voted for him and he just spit in your face.
 
What the fuck are you talking about!? Obama supports the current bill that is pushing for a $10.10 minimum wage. Signing an EO for federal contractors was reasonable because it doesn't affect that many people, but I'm sure he'd rather have Congress pass a bill that tackles the rest of the workforce.

Also, $10.10 is NOT arbitrary! Stop fucking posting!

"The $10.10 figure in the Harkin-Miller proposal isn't arbitrary. Progressive economists like to point out that if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since its high in the late 1960s, it would now be above $10."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/obama-minimum-wage_n_4235965.html
 
I don't understand why nobody gets this point. Anybody here with personal experience? I recently left a resort job in Tahoe because I was going negative. Perks are great and all, but they still do not make up for all the expenses of simply living. And to the guy who referenced African children, I'm pretty sure they aren't legally obligated to pay their rent. Don't make irrelevant comparisons.
 
Notice how they picked the absolute high in the late 1960's and adjusted from there. It is therefore an arbitrary number, as it would be different depending on the date they chose to start from. Pick a date in the 1950's or 1970's and you would come up with a different minimum wage using the same formula. There are literally thousands of potential outcomes.

Next.
 
They are people just like you and deserve to have the same standard of living, correct? That's your whole argument, that everyone is entitled to a minimum standard of living, isn't it?

And legally obligated to pay their rent, you are legally obligated to pay for anything you sign a contract for stating you will pay $xxxx per month. Nobody forces you to rent anything, you make that decision all by yourself. If you can't afford to pay the rent, don't sign a contract stating you will pay said rent. Pretty simple.
 
I think they do but they also don't live in America, so I don't see the point you're trying to make, also you have yet to answer any of my posts.
 
*Calls out Bill.Nye for making an irrelevant comparison on the second page.

*Makes an irrelevant comparison on the third page.
 
That's not actually how the workplace works, but here's a Nobel prize winning economist to tell you so you don't have to take it from me:

"Mike Konczal writes about how Washington has lost interest in the unemployed, and what a scandal that is. He also, however, makes an important point that I suspect plays a significant role in the political economy of this scandal: these are lousy times for the employed, too.

Why? Because they have so little bargaining power. Leave or lose your job, and the chances of getting another comparable job, or any job at all, are definitely not good. And workers know it: quit rates, the percentage of workers voluntarily leaving jobs, remain far below pre-crisis levels, and very very far below what they were in the true boom economy of the late 90s:

Now, you may believe that employment is a market relationship like any other — there’s a buyer and a seller, and it’s just a matter of mutual consent. You may also believe in Santa Claus. The truth is that employment is, in many though not all cases, a power relationship. In good economic times, or where workers’ position is protected by legal restraints and/or strong unions, that relationship may be relatively symmetric. In times like these, it’s hugely asymmetric: employers and employees alike know that workers are easy to replace, lost jobs very hard to replace.

And may I suggest that employers, although they’ll never say so in public, like this situation? That is, there’s a significant upside to them from the still-weak economy. I don’t think I’d go so far as to say that there’s a deliberate effort to keep the economy weak; but corporate America certainly isn’t feeling much pain, and the plight of workers is actually a plus from their point of view."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2013/12/24/the-plight-of-the-employed/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0
 
I shouldn't even respond because your argument doesn't make sense, but I do feel strongly on the topic. In order to work you need a place to live. This comes with expenses. You assume that your work will cover the BASIC expenses, and then hopefully have a little extra for life's emergencies or whatever you put it towards. You sign the lease in order to work. I wouldn't sign it and move if I didn't expect to get paid and afford it.

The Africa argument is illogical because this isn't Africa. And we aren't even on the same level of industrialization and progress. The child that you speak of is simply trying to survive. He isn't bound by any society or law. Only that of survival. The problem we are discussing isn't as primitive and raw. It involves a government and hundreds of other factors. You seem like one of those Obama dicksuckers who wants to move everyone from Africa over here, pay them shit, run out of jobs, and then take money from everybody else to drag the entire country down just to say that you're a good person or that you tried to help everyone. So you're telling me that you're okay with me living a basic lifestyle and taking 30-40% of your paycheck? Just so I can ski 2 days a week, drink and party and maybe work enough to maybe cover everything but probably not. If so, then alright you got what you want.

It shouldn't be raised a lot, but it should be raised. Even a small amount would ease the burden on every economic class and still not harm small business in a major way.
 
No you guys do that on your own, must be very hard living in your house, and looking down on people. who don't have what your parents gave you.
 
Standard of living is completely relative to where you live in the world and the U.S. is an entirely unrealistic standard to measure up to.

80% (roughly 5.5 billion) of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.
 
oh good a quick response to the 2008 financial crisis....

guaranteeing private profits and public losses.

wake the fuck up.

this is America if you are a company that fucks up you should suffer the consequences, the way we dealt with the situation lets big companies know that if they pull the same kind of shit in the future they can get away with it.
 
What exactly am I avoiding? You didn't post any actual ideas for me to rebuke, all you did was attack me. I could counter your stereotypical attack with my stereotypical attack and call you a lazy bum that just wants to keep getting handouts for free. But I don't know you at all so I can't. All that would do anyway is make this shit fest even shittier
 
1) Why does everything think the government is actually there to protect the individual's interests? How did we exist in a world for millennium without organized government? How did we manage to get by as a species without certain basic entitlements and protections? Inb4 times have changed etc etc etc. If you can't live off of a job you wouldn't take it, and if you did take it, you would die, because you wouldn't be able to live off of it.

2) The employer is not evil. Without employers no one would have a job, unless they were self employed. The employer is someone who has created/given so much to society that they need more man power to continue to keep their company/idea growing. Without employers there would be no jobs, and everyone that didn't work for themselves would cease to exist. AKA back to the stone age.

3) In support of #1 imagine if we didn't have gvt looting from our every move. I make 25 dollars an hour, after income taxes its more like 16. With an 8% sales tax on that it's 14.70. Thats not including all the other taxes on goods like beer, tobacco, gas, this and that so to account for those and make it easy i will say i effectively make 14 dollars an hour. Now my employer also has to pay taxes on me, in some cases they might even have to pay 166% of my salary before i see that 25 dollars. So my employer is therefore paying 37.50 an hour to keep me on board (i used 150%). 14 / 37 .50 =37.33%

37.33% out of what my company pays to keep me, is what i see. Just above 1/3, thanks to big ole uncle sam. Now imagine if this was across the board, you could iterate it a few times and that number would get even worse (mostly due to my company not paying the highest corporate tax in the "free" world.)
 
Actually I am the exact opposite, as you can tell from actually reading my posts. I think minimum wage should be abolished. It is a price control and distorts free markets, and that is a fact.

As I have stated above, raising the minimum wage is not good for our country, and will only benefit countries like China from all the new manufacturing jobs that are moved there. Some Americans will get a pay raise, others will lose their job.

But what I am focusing on is how they use things like minimum wage to control your currency, that is the negative outcome that affects everyone holding any US dollars, affecting every American, not just minimum wage workers.. This is highly inflationary to the US dollar, which means all your savings accounts are losing purchasing power. All while you are earning 0% interest on your money in the bank. They are slowly robbing you and you don't even realize it, and actually vote for it and support it and Obama is called a humanitarian for raising the minimum wage. And it is not Democrat vs. Republican, Bush raised the minimum wage too.

If we are a capitalistic society, then let's have actual free markets. Minimum wage is not capitalism, bailing out companies is not capitalism. We are drifting from the foundations that made this country great, capitalism being one of them.
 
But, you see, you had the option to take a better paying job and did. As does everyone in this country. You felt you weren't getting paid an appropriate amount, so you left and found a new job where you could make ends meet.

I've always looked at minimum wage as something that was never meant to be lived on. Why does a 15 year old HS freshman need a wage that allows him to provide for a family when he just wants to by weed and movie tickets?

 
I am going to have to say this is awesome. yah you might think a lot of people will lose their jobs. but BC in Canada raised the minimum wadge to $10.25 and it was the smartest move because how do you beat a dieing economy? give the people more money to spend on things. more money to spend locally means more jobs. more jobs means more money for eeeevery one.
 
It doesnt work that way.

Higher wages = higher cost of operation

net effect = 0

inflation = yes

government revenue = up
 
Not everyone has the option of going out and finding a better paying job. Some people don't have the skills or education for better jobs. Some people have criminal backgrounds that limit potential employment. Some are single parents and are limited to jobs with flexibility. Some places have limited jobs available. Some people have illnesses (physical or mental or both) that limit their employment opportunities. The list goes on.

If the world was black and white, then absolutely yes. Go get a new job that pays better. The fact of the matter is it's not black and white and that just isn't an option for a huge number of people who live in the grey areas.
 
It seems that most of you never took an economics class.

Higher minimum wage = high demand for jobs, but low supply of jobs.

And minimum wage isn't supposed to make ends meet. It's for people who have no work experience.
 
"Why does everything think the government is actually there to protect the individual's interests?"

Because of this:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

"How did we manage to get by as a species without certain basic entitlements and protections?"

With a much lower quality of life and earlier death.

"Inb4 times have changed etc etc etc."

Times haven't changed.....?

"The employer is not evil."

Did I call employers "evil?" I simply understand that the employers are out for their best interest, and their interest is not always the same as the workers. Sometimes it is, for example in creating a more efficient business, but sometimes it isn't, as is the case with wages. Employees want higher wages (obviously) and employers want to have to pay less in wages (obviously). That's why strong unionization is important. Capital by it's very nature is generally concentrated in the hands of a relative few, which means that if labour wants it's fair share it must collectively bargain for it's interests.

"Without employers no one would have a job, unless they were self employed."

What if people collectively controlled their workplaces and were able to participate in business decisions that affected their lives? Then they'd be both employed, and employers. (There is a name for this system I think...)

"The employer is someone who has created/given so much to society that they need more man power to continue to keep their company/idea growing."

So if we make them pay $15/hour to their employees (if the MW had kept pace with productivity gains since the 60s it would be $21/hour) they will all just go home and sit on their thumbs? This isn't an Ayn Rand novel, it's the real world.

"Without employers there would be no jobs, and everyone that didn't work for themselves would cease to exist. AKA back to the stone age."

Yes, people would simply "cease to exist" if we raised the MW and the US would slip back to "the stone age." How come Australia hasn't seen this person disappearing phenomenon?

"imagine if we didn't have gvt looting from our every move"

I don't imagine the government as simply "looting from my every move" but I guess I don't watch as much Glenn Beck as you do.

"I make 25 dollars an hour, after income taxes its more like 16."

You pay a 36% income tax on $25/hour? I call BS.

"With an 8% sales tax on that it's 14.70."

Assuming you spend every penny you make and have no savings.

"Thats not including all the other taxes on goods like beer, tobacco"

You should not drink so much and quit smoking, it's bad for you.

"to account for those and make it easy i will say i effectively make 14 dollars an hour"

You are doing very shady math.

"Now my employer also has to pay taxes on me, in some cases they might even have to pay 166% of my salary before i see that 25 dollars. So my employer is therefore paying 37.50 an hour to keep me on board (i used 150%). 14 / 37 .50 =37.33%"

Do you have any documents to show that you're getting these numbers from somewhere other than your ass?
 
Nice macro economics 101, so what do you suggest we do now for the millions of parents with kids on minimum-wage? Should we just throw welfare at them, because either way its still coming out of the governments pocket.
 
Like the current government respects the constitution.

Technology has advanced human society not the government

Employers don't want to pay their employees less, they want employees that are worth what they pay them.

I will never use the word collective

I will congratulate you on the Ayn Rand catch.

Glenn Beck is a nut job.

Bad math on that one. i get taxed at 28%

What good is money unless you spend it at some point.

I enjoy a drink and a cigarette now and then, shame on me. Also in NY its 68 cents a gallon in gasoline tax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States

With corrections from my income tax rate i'll make it 16 an hour

How much it costs to have an employee

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/26/smallbusiness/employee_costs/

still 16 / 37.5 = 42.67 %
 
public schools are free, and with a high school education alone it's easy to make more than minimum wage. parents making minimum wage most likely dropped out of high school or are criminals, so they brought it upon themselves anyway
 
Would you mind posting your source for that? What i found says about 20% of hourly paid employees are under the age of 25, and 3% of the hourly paid population over 25 makes minimum wage. The latest info i found was from 2012.

"Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 21 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over."

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.htm

 
Honestly, yes, I would rather the fed gov help them get back on their feet/gain new skill sets using fed tax dollars than to take the money out of the private sector by raising the national min wage.

I realize this thread is about President Obama raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, so in this case it is coming from the federal government. I just meant in general.
 
Exactly. Thank you.

People who bitch about minimum wage are oftentimes the same ones who couldn't close their legs in high school and had two kids by the time they were 19. Then, with no education they got a job at wal Mart and can't support their two kids and wonder what went wrong. Live within your means. If you don't have the skills, apply for freakjng grants and go to school. People are fucking lazy.
 
Oh, and I'm sick of Obama abusing his executive orders. That's so totalitarian. Welcome to democrat/liberal thinking. "If we can't get our way well just do it anyway". I feel bad for people who reelectrd this clown. I wish republicans weren't always making themselves look stupid so we could get a good strong leader in office.
 
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