Quote:This argument ignores the fact that there are many more people needing work than there are non minimum wage jobs. That is the problem. Profits should not be more important then the lives of workers. If all that are available are jobs paying next to nothing do you not take the job? If you have responsibilities you cannot do that you must take that job even if it does not cover family expenses. How do you do justify profits going up exponentially but not wages? Cost of living but not wages? Some large companies are able to deal with this, places like Cosco. Then you have others that squeeze their employees for everything they can to make a few extra bucks. How is that ok to you?
Profits AND reasonable wages can coexist.
You're correct the problem is there are not enough quality jobs in the market for the amount of people that need work. Let's look at why:
Starting in 1913 you had the introduction of the income tax, where employers where forced by government to take money from employee's and than also match that money confiscated from employee's to pay government. So essentially if I as an employer today, want to pay you as an employee $700 a week, it will cost me as an employer $800 a week. You'll as an employee only take home about $600 a week. That's an extra $200 a week you'll never see as an employee.
In 1938 government passed legislation requiring employers to pay time and half after an employee reaches 40 hours, that's why today you'll be hard pressed to find anyone willing to let you work more than 40 hours. Also a set minimum wage was established creating an artificial floor for wages. If I as an employer previously would have paid someone to do a remedial task, I now would have to wage if it was worth the additional cost of paying someone else to do that task, doing it myself, or just subbing out the job. You can see how both of these would create a disincentive to create jobs.
Enter into the mid 90's and you now have technology replacing remedial jobs by the thousands, manufacturing, telecommunications, packing and shipping, and many retail outlets now have an option of using technology to replace human workers. In countries with heavy regulation you already have automated workers taking orders at fast food restaurants, would you like fries with that is a pretty simple task to use robots for.
Today it's a GLOBAL market place, regardless if we like it or not, the American worker is competing with workers across the globe for jobs. Naturally heavy regulation and high taxes will push what few manufacturing jobs are left over seas only reducing the opportunity for steady work. You already have most of the telecommunication jobs over sea's and if you've been to any retailer when was the last time you didn't see the "self checkout lane"?
Companies especially when they get big will always look to maximize profits, there's nothing legislatively you can do the effectively change this. The only thing that CAN be done is to create an atmosphere more encouraging to small business. The less people are dependent on Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Gap for employment the better off the economy will be. These minimum wage jobs where not created to support an individual much less a family, they where created for kids coming out of high school to get experience, or retired individuals to generate extra income. The problem is we have pushed so many jobs over sea's or created an atmosphere that employers see no benefit in creating that job we've limited the work available to people.
Add all of that the Affordable Care Act and you've seen nothing yet. Once all these "passes" are over with and the elections are done, business will be forced to either take on enormous cost or reduce payroll, which do you think they will chose?