Posted on 09/08/2014 11:18:07 AM PDT by jazusamo
While we talk about democracy and equal rights, we seem increasingly to let both private and government decisions be determined by mob rule. There is nothing democratic about mob rule. It means that some people's votes are to be overruled by other people's disruptions, harassments and threats.
The latest examples are the mobs in the streets in cities across the country, demanding that employers pay a minimum wage of $15 an hour, or else that the government makes them do so by law. Some of the more gullible observers think the issue is whether what some people are making now is "a living wage." This misconstrues the whole point of hiring someone to do work. Those who are being hired are paid for the value of the work they do.
If their work is really worth more than what their employer is paying them, all they have to do is quit and go work for some other employer, who will pay them what their work is really worth. If they can't find any other employer who will pay them more, then what makes them think their work is worth more?
As for a "living wage," the employer is not hiring people in order to acquire dependents and become their meal ticket. He is hiring them for what they produce.
Are some people not able to produce much? Absolutely! I know because I was once one of those people.
After leaving home as a teenager, I discovered that what I could earn would only enable me to rent a furnished room about 6 by 9 feet. Instead of a closet, it had a nail on the back of the door — which was completely adequate for my wardrobe at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
My first job out of high school paid a whopping $2.10 per hour, which was 50 cents per hour higher than the minimum wage at the time. I considered myself damn lucky as it paid better than all those burger flipping type jobs which I’d applied for and which turned me down.
These people after a living wage for flipping and bagging burgers are going to put themselves out of one of the few jobs they’re capable of doing.
MY first job out of HS was in a dark, dirty bearing factory.
Of course I had to ‘qualify’ and having busted my A$# in HS, I did.
I got a great wage and benefits.
My friends were all out enjoying their summer and I was grinding it out on midnights in a hot and dirty mill.
I started college with my own car and money in my pocket.
Recently, my business travel took me to the Mon Valley here in SW Pennsylvania where I passed at least a dozen of those old abandoned mills where I got my first job. Rather than using it as a stepping stone for something better, too many people there used it as a career and turned to drugs and Democrat politics when it didn't last.
One of my college roomies worked the mill at Inland Steel as his summer job back in the 70s. He came to school in a new car and with plenty of money.
I worked as a laborer in commercial construction. I didn’t get the money he did, but did OK. Hot, dirty and sometimes dangerous work, but it was better than flipping burgers.
These burger flippers don’t realize that they simply are not worth $15/hour. They will be replaced by automation and/or their businesses will cease to exist because the business model can’t support it.
I personally don’t buy fast food, so I am but little effected.
My first job out of high school paid a whopping $78 a month as a Private E-1 in the United States Marine Corps. After paying my laundry bill, that left me $25 for one trip a month to Tijuana.
Life was good back in the 50s.
I think THOMAS SOWELL is the smartest person on earth!
I think I have all of his books. What a genius. I am not smart enough to read them and understand everything in them, but I TRY!
That sounds good, except that those in power manipulate the value of the work you do, by importing millions of legal and illegal workers to increase the supply of what you do, thereby lowering the value of what you do.
I baby sat for 25 cents an hour. In 9th grade I worked at a drug store after school for 25 cents an hour. I worked summers for a couple of dollars an hour at a factory, min. wage was $1.25 an hour then. I worked summer 1972 at Glenn’s Snack Bar in Stillwater OK for $1.25 an hour. I once got a nickel. Another gal working there once got a quarter tip. That was a BIG tip at a place where a coke was 5 cents! I was a substitute teacher 1973-1975 and made nearly nothing. Worked as a secretary, then as a clerk at a store, then as a bank teller till 1978 for $2.50 an hour. Actually worked my way UP to that. Not sure what min. wage was then, but it was pretty low. We got by on two paychecks back then, our rent at our apartment was low, then we bought our first house, payment was low. Lived within our means. Didn’t get any handouts. Paid all my college loans back on time, in full.... I am a dying breed.
I don’t buy fast food, either. Last time we ate at McDonalds, we were driving back from California to Texas august 2013. I couldn’t eat my burger, the meat was gray, cold, and slimy... The pickles and the coke were ok, so that was my dinner. But the food was horrible. I won’t buy it now on the dollar menu so I sure won’t buy it if the price goes up. I assume the “poor vulnerables” can get it with their EBT cards, so they won’t care how much it costs!
I worked at Liberty Glass Factory in Sapulpa Okla summers 1969, 70, 71. We were well paid, slightly over min. wage., but it was 110F inside the factory so when you went outside after work and it was only 106, it felt cool! LOL Man it was hot in there and we worked shift work. 7-3. 3-11. 11-7.
I paid my own way through college with that summer job and a bank loan, couldn’t get a fed gov student loan!
The way to deal with these employees is to tell them that they will pay their employees $15 an hour, however every employee must turn in a voluntary resignation and then put it in a hat. Then the employer will draw out half of them and the ones left will be paid $15 per hour, but they will be expected to work double time and anyone who can’t meet the new productivity requirements will be fired.
So you were in Stillwater when the McD showed up in town and didn’t jump on that??? As an OSU student then, we thought it was great. Later, in my last semester and after getting married in the summer of 1977, I worked at Hardee’s. Never did work at McD.
I think it was $68.00 a month when I went RA in 1957. My previous job as a car hop payed fifteen cents an hour plus tips which could run as much as a dollar a day, or as little as nothing, and if I got hungry I could actually end up owing money at the end of the shift.
Actually my first job, I was still in high school, was at the local movie theater as a projectionist. I worked 3 nights a week for a whopping $2.00 a night, that included putting the film trailers together before doing two showings. Popcorn was still ten cents for me, just like the other patrons, but I paid no income tax, or SS. [:-)
LOL! Can you imagine the screaming and howling if that happened, it’d be brutal.
In HS I had my own lawn cutting business. Made about $100/wk. Had plenty of money.
MY Dad built me a trailer, for my bicycle, to carry the equipment, mower, edger, can for clippings, broom..... Those were the days.
Sowell has been pounding on the damage minimum wage laws do to the poor since the 1960s.
For a PVT E-1, it was $78 a month until you had 4 months service and then it jumped up to $83 a month.
https://www.navycs.com/charts/1955-military-pay-chart.html
Dang I knew they wuz stealing from me. :)
Memories are sometimes less factual than we believe. I went in as an E2 from the National Guard and was sure my pay was $86.00 but I guess $85.80 is close enough.
I do remember the First Sgt setting at the end of the pay line to encourage a little charity giving to all the ghouls that were there to prey on the naivete of the enlisted.
Haircuts were ten cents, barber came once a week and cut the entire company in one day, and used a razor for that neat trim around the ears.
Those Were the Days My Friend.
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