Or you could just pay your employees a reasonable wage to live on rather than exploiting them for your own personal gain?
Not everyone can be a business owner orwho would work for them. It's not like everyone is born equal and can afford the same schooling and networks
whose to say what's reasonable?
True, not everyone can be a business owner. At the same time, everyone can develop a marketable skill set and that skill set should grow over time leading to an increasing wage. for example, does the person at the drive through window have to eventually stop getting my order wrong before we double their mandatory salary? The great thing about this country is with the abundance of resources you don't have to become an astronaut to be able to feed cloth and house you your spouse and your offspring.
And don't talk to me about affording schooling. Think about it, we are talking to each other through a means of information that allows us access to almost every piece of information ever learned by man... like ever... no really, i mean EVER! Think about it. If you took a smart phone and sent it through time to medieval times and they could still access the modern internet and all this information how many men would kings sacrifice for access? Jim lovel flew blind around the moon with a slide rule, neil armstrong landed with a computer barely more powerful than a t-83 graphing calculator. Education is an individual choice, not a function of government spending. And as the nation that has spent more money than any nation in the history of all mankind on education at what point do we start asking for a return on that INVESTMENT?
Sure I had a good upbringing,Was taught to read and write before school. Went to good schools, now have an MBA. However some people couldn't read and write, ended up at schools in horrible areas where nobody wants to teach and weren't put in the same position to thrive...As a child none of this was their choice.
Quote:American healthcare is the best in the world if you are very rich and can afford the best care available. Its health outcomes are poor for those at the bottom of the pile though where the socialised care model is superior.
I get 33 paid days holiday in Australia used to be about 36 in UK (including public holiday) how's that compare to your average office worker there? Or am I mistaken?
What is average? Because if we're just using our experiences, then I get no less than 25 days a year and I only work 4 days a week. That doesn't include sick leave where I have 400+ hours built up.
Quote:Or you could just pay your employees a reasonable wage to live on rather than exploiting them for your own personal gain?
Not everyone can be a business owner orwho would work for them. It's not like everyone is born equal and can afford the same schooling and networks
Reasonable wage? What's reasonable? Are we going to pay the kid straight out of high school 25k - 30k? Because that's what's going to happen if you get a job at McDonald's with the idea that you should earn a decent income. These jobs were never meant to be a full-time gig for adults with responsibilities. The company will not suffer the cost, however. When you pay these people that kind of money, you'll soon find that burgers run $10, or they'll be out of a job and replaced by machines that can do a better job.
Minimum in Australia is 20 days plus public holidays (12 in my state) 28 is minimum in UK including public holiday.
Whats wrong with paying $10? Isn't that better than letting McDonald's exploit a workforce and drive down wages? Don't think I've ever worked for less than 25k usd
Quote:Minimum in Australia is 20 days plus public holidays (12 in my state) 28 is minimum in UK including public holiday.
Whats wrong with paying $10? Isn't that better than letting McDonald's exploit a workforce and drive down wages? Don't think I've ever worked for less than 25k usd
Artificial floors create scarcity. Paying $10 often means some other schlub gets to make the real minimum wage when his job has to be eliminated.
Quote:Artificial floors create scarcity. Paying $10 often means some other schlub gets to make the real minimum wage when his job has to be eliminated.
There is some merit to your position, I won't deny that. However, we must consider the labor market.
The labor market drives the price based on demand. Those that are demanding labor are the businesses. The supply are the workers.
Here's the problem with the free trade policies like the TPP, the corporations have the ability to look at the entire globe as the labor market. They will choose to go where the price for labor is cheapest. Thus, here in the USA, the demand for labor is low, and the supply of workers is high.
To me, in terms of economics, I always will side with my country first and then my class second. As an American worker, if we are letting capital fly out of our nation to build factories and pay cheaper wages in foreign lands, there must be some correction made for this deflation of wages.
I can understand why people push for a higher floor on terms of an increased minimum wage. Americans can't compete with Asian workers who are getting paid pennies on the dollar.
I bet if we got rid of these corporatist free trade policies, and protect the manufacturing industry here nationally, you'd see wages go up "naturally". But I'm not sure we'll ever get there...
Quote:There is some merit to your position, I won't deny that. However, we must consider the labor market.
The labor market drives the price based on demand. Those that are demanding labor are the businesses. The supply are the workers.
Here's the problem with the free trade policies like the TPP, the corporations have the ability to look at the entire globe as the labor market. They will choose to go where the price for labor is cheapest. Thus, here in the USA, the demand for labor is low, and the supply of workers is high.
To me, in terms of economics, I always will side with my country first and then my class second. As an American worker, if we are letting capital fly out of our nation to build factories and pay cheaper wages in foreign lands, there must be some correction made for this deflation of wages.
I can understand why people push for a higher floor on terms of an increased minimum wage. Americans can't compete with Asian workers who are getting paid pennies on the dollar.
I bet if we got rid of these corporatist free trade policies, and protect the manufacturing industry here nationally, you'd see wages go up "naturally". But I'm not sure we'll ever get there...
Some of that is true. The minimum wage was originally instituted to protect workers being paid a higher wage from losing their jobs to lower wage states. The equivalent would be to impose a global minimum wage, but that would be ruinous to 3rd world workers.
There are a lot of problems with the current trade deals, as well as illegal immigration and abuse of worker visas. Both parties are at fault here.
The bottom line is that since 2008 we've had far more people needing jobs than jobs. Raising the minimum wage in the US can only acerbate that problem. What we need is an economy that's creating lots of jobs. What we have are politicians using our tax dollars to buy votes and campaign donations.
Quote:Minimum in Australia is 20 days plus public holidays (12 in my state) 28 is minimum in UK including public holiday.
Whats wrong with paying $10? Isn't that better than letting McDonald's exploit a workforce and drive down wages? Don't think I've ever worked for less than 25k usd
Are you going to required 40-hour work weeks, too?
Exploit the worker? How are they exploited? They're incredibly low-skilled workers, and they're very often bad (or not good) at their jobs. These were always supposed be temporary jobs. A 16-year-old doesn't deserve a 20K / year job flipping burgers.
So you see no moral issue with dirt cheap burger being dirt cheap because the people working there make not much while the big corporation makes massive profit?
I certainly wouldn't like to take a pay cut so my company could sell products cheaper while still making the same profit. I am an accountant there's probably millions around the world who could do my job for less money too.
What's your job?
Quote:So you see no moral issue with dirt cheap burger being dirt cheap because the people working there make not much while the big corporation makes massive profit?
I certainly wouldn't like to take a pay cut so my company could sell products cheaper while still making the same profit. I am an accountant there's probably millions around the world who could do my job for less money too.
What's your job?
No, because it takes next to nothing to learn the job. You can be both unskilled and uneducated to be very effective which means that just about any one can do it. I don't know about there, but here the CPA exam is brutal and requires a degree first. You don't go to an open interview on Thursdays from 1 to 4 to get an accounting job.
So you are really comparing the supply and value of accountants (require at least one degree) to the guy who says "would you like fries with that?"
You don't get paid what you get paid because someone likes you, cares for you, or has warm fuzzy lets take a shower feelings for you. you get paid based on supply and demand of labor,
Furthermore, no one makes anyone go work for someone else. I find it Ironic that the side of the political spectrum that claims so much to advocate for the common worker is also the side that a.) teaches them to be the most risk averse and b.) passes the most stringent taxes and regulations to ensure that only the pre-existing massive corporations can meet the cost of compliance as owners in the marketplace.
and incidentally, places like McDonalds and Walmart tend to have policies on promotion that make it possible for an hourly cashier to work their way up to a general manager of a profit center and in one case I know eventually a franchise owner.
Feelgoodism is rarely good for business.
Quote:So you see no moral issue with dirt cheap burger being dirt cheap because the people working there make not much while the big corporation makes massive profit?
I certainly wouldn't like to take a pay cut so my company could sell products cheaper while still making the same profit. I am an accountant there's probably millions around the world who could do my job for less money too.
What's your job?
The only thing immoral about a burger is what it does to my waistline.
JJ I get that accountants are more skilled and therefore will be remunerated better. But why should any job pay poverty wages? Why would you want people to be in poverty.
As for accountants I'm lucky to be part of a profession which restricts the labour market via professional bodies. Also not having free market immigration because there are millions of accountants in the likes of India who are also highly educated.
There's a point being missed here as we discuss fast food jobs... the flight of manufacturing from the usa to foreign countries has created a stifled job market. Yes, prior to nafta, fast food and the service industry were mainly for kids.
Things done gone up and changed. You can't have an honest discussion of wages until you at least recognize the current situation. There are studies that show the average age of these workers is no longer in their teens or early 20s any more.
That's a problem for this country, no matter your political leaning...
Quote:There's a point being missed here as we discuss fast food jobs... the flight of manufacturing from the usa to foreign countries has created a stifled job market. Yes, prior to nafta, fast food and the service industry were mainly for kids.
Things done gone up and changed. You can't have an honest discussion of wages until you at least recognize the current situation. There are studies that show the average age of these workers is no longer in their teens or early 20s any more.
That's a problem for this country, no matter your political leaning...
An yet, the minimum wage itself was designed to protect jobs like those in the manufacturing industry from being undercut by a worker population (specifically blacks) who were willing to work for less to gain employment. The end result is that manufacturing leaves because they can't pay viable wages so they either relocate or shut down. In either case, working for $8 would've been better than NOT working for $15. That's why adults are being forced into minimum wage jobs, because the adult job creators found the conditions to be unsuitable.
Quote:JJ I get that accountants are more skilled and therefore will be remunerated better. But why should any job pay poverty wages? Why would you want people to be in poverty.
As for accountants I'm lucky to be part of a profession which restricts the labour market via professional bodies. Also not having free market immigration because there are millions of accountants in the likes of India who are also highly educated.
Most of us free market advocates are also for strong immigration controls to protect the American workers. You can't, for instance, lay off your entire IT staff and replace them with H1-Bs like Disney recently tried to do. That is a legitimate use for government regulations. We aren't anarchists as many seem to believe.
Quote:There's a point being missed here as we discuss fast food jobs... the flight of manufacturing from the usa to foreign countries has created a stifled job market. Yes, prior to nafta, fast food and the service industry were mainly for kids.
Things done gone up and changed. You can't have an honest discussion of wages until you at least recognize the current situation. There are studies that show the average age of these workers is no longer in their teens or early 20s any more.
That's a problem for this country, no matter your political leaning...
Prior to 2008 the fast food industry was mainly for kids. There were always some adults who were so unskilled that they could only work in fast food, but the recession that never ends has forced adults to take those jobs. The solution is to fix the economy so those adults can once again get real jobs, not raise the minimum wage.
Quote:Most of us free market advocates are also for strong immigration controls to protect the American workers. You can't, for instance, lay off your entire IT staff and replace them with H1-[BAD WORD REMOVED] like Disney recently tried to do. That is a legitimate use for government regulations. We aren't anarchists as many seem to believe.
^This.