Posted on 02/25/2013 12:32:55 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
President Obama, in his State of the Union address this month, proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. As recently as 2006 that rate was $5.15, and has been at its current level of $7.25 only since July 2009. The next day, as if not to be outdone, two Minnesota state legislators proposed raising Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 per hour from $6.15 presently. (Minnesota businesses currently follow the federal minimum.)
After years of consensus among economists on the effects of the minimum wage, the last twenty years has seen renewed debate over whether minimum wage laws reduce employment, even for low-skilled workers. The debate turns on a set of case studies where the number of workers hired in a particular industry, such as fast-food chain restaurants, did not fall as a result of an increase in the minimum wage in one state versus another. Broader studies consistently find disemployment of lower-skilled workers, though the size of the effect is not as large as originally thought.
Still, an increase in minimum wages from $6.15 to $9.50 is a large increase. By my estimate that total effect reduces teen employment by approximately 5.5%. Other estimates could place that anywhere between 3% and 16%. Some of this has already happened with the rising federal minimum wage. This effect was not nearly as large as the unemployment of teens due to the Great Recession (teen employment fell from 165,000 in 2005 to 108,000 in 2009) but the rise in the minimum wage did not help.
In Minnesota 93,000 workers made the minimum wage in 2011....
(Excerpt) Read more at americanexperiment.org ...
no no....minimum wage is far less than that...most self employed folks risk going deep into the hole — and many end up earning much less than 0.00 per hour......
(but point taken)
I have to laugh when someone asks about my annual salary. As those of us who are self-employed know, the answer generally is that it’s whatever is left after everyone else takes their piece out of the pie. There are many months I would love to be assured of at least making minimum wage for every hour I worked.
Right now I’m trying to figure out how to come up with money to cover the 30% increase in property insurance on my residence for next year. Guess I might have to try working Main Street! Life is not so rosy some days - even in Texas.
Ain’t that the truth. In the 90’s I started a business. I worked the typical 70 hour weeks and in my third year of business, I took home only $5000.
In 2000, I launched a new business that took off. Now I employee a bunch of whiny overpaid liberals that complain how “the rich’ don’t pay enough.
It won’t be long before the pay differential between skilled and unskilled workers will be $1.00 per hour.
I’d be planning a lawsuit-proof way of being rid of them. In my experience, that means detailed documentation of every lapse or shortcoming, then POW! Yer’ gone!
Liberals advocating minimum wage laws are a darned uncompassionate lot. After all, if you are advocating the confiscation or regulation of somebody else’s money, why not advocate a minimum wage of, say, a zillion dollars per hour?
Here a little though experiment:
Consider a most compassionate minimum wage of a zillion dollars an hour. If this would be bad economic law, articulate the precise reasons why. (You aren’t allow to say that “this is just crazy.”)
Now consider a minimum wage of a million dollars an hour. Good or bad economic policy and law? Why?
Now a wage of $100 per hour. Why?
Next $50 per hour. Then $20. Then $10. Then $7.85.
At what point, if any, is there uncovered a GOOD economic reason for minimum wage law? Or rather, is the reason for rejecting a zillion dollar per hour minimum wage law the same reason for rejecting a $7.85 minimum wage law?
Our main weapon against what is happening today is taxes.
Why don't businesses stand together and do this?
I don't understand why we don't do this.
I believe we have become a nation of cowardly slaves.
If you want to get technical — What self employed people earn are not “wages”.
Sounds great. In the past year, I’ve learned about Elance.com and have grown to LOVE it.
You can post a job, and you get people from all countries bidding to do the job. I kid you not...I’m paying THREE BUCKS AN HOUR to do my data entry.
And these guys are fast and really want to do a good job!
Just last year I was paying a lazy employee (who would take a week off here or there so she could go to her lesbian friend’s wedding or to her unemployed mohawk wearing boyfriend’s paintball tournament) $18 an hour + health insurance to do this.
I have many other job positions I plan to outsource as well!
Are you eligible for USAA insurance? I just switched and saved 25%!
“the last twenty years has seen renewed debate over whether minimum wage laws reduce employment, even for low-skilled workers.”
What debate. It absolutely does increase unemployment for teens and low skill workers. Let’s just make minimum wage $1 million/hr and solve poverty once and for all. To poverty and beyond
I’m assuming the people you’re hiring at $3 an hour are not in the US. Paying someone $18 an hour + healthcare insurance to do data entry is absurd, but $3 an hour? Even if they worked 16 hours a day, they’d have a sub-poverty level income.
Yes, how dare someone want to take some time off for functions important to them.
Yup, it was absurd what we’ve paid some people here. That last one was supposed to be doing higher end stuff like accounting, but she just ended up doing very entry level like work.
All the $3 an hour hires seem to be from India and Phillipines.
I even got message from a guy in India saying he’d do all my data entry work for just a dollar an hour, but I haven’t used him yet.
I’ll use your post as an example when my friends and family ask why I don’t freelance. Who can compete with people who live in wretched, infested, Christless Third-World hellholes?
I’ve been able to pay out a lot more to American companies since outsourcing.
In Maine, at least, you get 5 weeks to shitcan a new, under-performing employee before the Unemployment Insurance hit kicks in. I set an alarm in my phone one week in advance at each new hire.
Are you eligible for USAA insurance?”
Thanks for the response. Already thought about USAA but I am just not eligible, unfortunately. My ex was in the Coast Guard a long time ago but not long enough to provide this type of benefits. For those that are eligible, it is wonderful that such a company exists.
I’m not sure about this, but I’ve heard that you can apply if one of your parents served in the military. Might be something worth checking out.
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