The idea behind raising the threshold for overtime is to prevent salaried workers from earning less than total minimum wage.
Fast food places (I worked in one once) are notorious for abusing people by calling them ‘managers’ when they don’t actually manage anything or anyone. It’s just a way to evade overtime rules.
For instance: If you’re a ‘manager’ making $16 an hour when the minimum is $15 then if you work a typical 60 hour week on salary then you’ll end up making $10.66 an hour for that week.
That’s the big thing this rule is supposed to address.
I completely oppose the minimum wage but if you’re going to do it then this adjustment to the rule on the threshold makes sense.
George Bush set the last threshold after a minimum wage hike so this is just an administrative thing, not a political football.
The manager making $10 per hour understands that he has an opportunity to climb the ladder. That is why he doesn’t mind. Same with interns before they become doctors. Trying to make the entire country one big union organization will destroy us.
I agree. I think this rule makes sense to me.
Neither Bush *OR* Valerie’s man child have any business getting between the pay of an employer and an employee. None.
If an employer doesn’t pay the promised salary or holds someone against their will, the state can get involved if need be.
Simply put, PRICE and WAGE controls *do not work*. Thomas Sowell’s brilliant book “Basic Economics” explains this in laymen’s terms...and my theory is that Obama KNOWS all this, but just doesn’t care.
The people he SAYS he is trying to help are going to get hurt. They will be let go, or they will be hired at JUST ABOVE the threshold then worked harder than ever.
Little is even thought of the freedom of the small businessman, who wants to give someone experience and management training. Instead, this fellow is the “The Forgotten Man” Amity Shlaes wrote about—the small businessman who just won’t expand or hire someone. Why? The cost is too high.
Whatever the reasons Bush gave for doing something similar, I am CERTAIN they weren’t done in the face of these factors: shrinking GDP, record decline in work force participation, an increase of 80% in the national debt, and as a lame duck.
This was a political move, not an economic one.
For all these reasons, it ought to be opposed.