Posted on 01/18/2021 4:44:37 AM PST by EyesOfTX
I posted the photo below on my Facebook account on Sunday with the caption “Live photograph of what a national $15 minimum wage looks like:”
Some readers mistakenly took that post as an attack on poor people, which of course completely misses the point. The point is that, once the government requires fast food businesses to dramatically increase the costs associated with the jobs they provide, many, perhaps most, of those jobs will simply go away, and the workers at, say, McDonalds will increasingly be displaced by the technology seen in the photo.
I got my first actual job when I was 14 years old, helping a couple of guys run the local mini-golf park. From that point forward, I worked every summer and Christmas break throughout my high school and college years, and held jobs during many in-school semesters as well. Every one of those jobs was a minimum wage job, and I was lucky and happy to have them, even the welder’s helper job on a pipeline construction crew, working 80-90 hour weeks in the heat of South Texas summers. With time and a half for overtime, even that $2.10 minimum wage in effect in 1976-77 added up to a decent sum of money by the time September rolled around.
I also worked various jobs in local clothing and hardware stores, where I learned how to do things like deal with ornery customers, measure an inseam, iron shirts, cut pipe, wrap Christmas gifts and put bicycles together. Over one Christmas break, since I was then majoring in accounting, I was assigned the task of taking inventory in a hardware store that had at the time been in operation for more than 80 years. You could never believe how many hundreds of thousands of screws, bolts, washers and nails one store could accumulate over such a long period of time.
I also worked for little while as a checker at a grocery store and for maybe 3 days as a waiter, but that was one job I couldn’t hack. I’ve been extremely courteous to restaurant wait staff throughout my life as a result of that awful experience.
The point here is this: These minimum wage jobs are an important element of our society’s cohesiveness and evolution, and the more we have of them, the better off our society will be. Jobs like these not only serve to keep people from becoming dependent on the state, they serve to teach young people many useful skills in life.
In my own life, I could directly link that experience taking inventory to my early career as an accountant. That experience working summers in the oil field was a catalyst for developing an interest in the oil business, in which I spent my entire adult life. The experience in sales directly helped prepare me for a later career as a lobbyist.
Many people like to make fun of “burger flippers” working at fast food joints like McDonald’s, but these are some of the most useful starting jobs a person can have. Think of the various skillsets young people develop while in such jobs. For starters, you learn how to cook things, which is one of the basic keys to human life. But you are also customer-facing much of the time, and learn to develop skills in dealing with difficult human beings, who, trust me, are every-freaking-where you go.
At a burger joint, you also learn how a basic supply chain operates, from the patties to the grill to the bun to the bag and out the window to the customer, adding accessories like salt, pepper, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, mustard, fries and ketchup and a 32 oz. soft drink with extra ice along the way. You may think it’s all trivial and tedious when you’re 20 years old and doing it, but these are all skills you will lean on throughout the rest of your life.
When the government artificially sets prices on these jobs that are so high that businesses can’t remain profitable with their current work force, many of these jobs start to disappear, and many young people lose their means of learning these important life skills. Millions of teenagers and college students aren’t lucky as I was and my grandkids are to have two parents to help them learn such skills, and the lack of job opportunities can hinder their abilities to make an adequate living as they progress through life.
I’m all for paying people more money, and many companies have commendably moved to a $15 minimum wage voluntarily in recent years. Other companies that can only remain profitable at lower wage levels haven’t done that, which is how a free market system should work. When those companies are forced by the government to pay more for their workers, they will either adapt by cutting some of their jobs or go out of business entirely, taking all of their jobs with them.
That’s the point of that picture. It has literally nothing to do with demeaning poor people, and everything to do with wanting as many people as possible to have the jobs where they will develop the skills they will use for the rest of their lives.
That is all.
Get ready for $12 hamburgers
This is just another attack on our economy by the communists. I doubt the USA will be any different from Venezuela in a few years. It will massively suck but I will take joy in the fact that Trump haters, Biden supporters will be beaten within an inch of their lives on the street by the public for bringing this hell up on the people.
Economics is not taught in schools. Even back when I was in school we didn’t learn basic common sense economics. So is it any wonder people do not understand this?
What they will not like is costs going up. But putting two and two together....doesn’t seem to happen.
Once the citizens allowed the gov to mandate minimum wage, they gave the gov power to regulate in this area. It always starts small.
Hey....where is my second gov stimulus check?
Skills they will use for the rest of their lives? What a racist and homophobe!
“...many companies have commendably moved to a $15 minimum wage voluntarily in recent years...”
It should be noted that many of those jobs have automated pushing many onto the unemployment roles. You only get paid for what your job is worth to the business, not what the Govt dictates.
Do any of these “little helpers” and “do-gooders” tell us how this benefits all the people who currently worked their way up to $15/hr?
Current federal $7.25/hr = in place since 2009 or 2010. I did the following calculation:
Minimum Wage Valued in 2020 dollars
2010 ($7.25/hr) = 2020 ($8.59)
1976 ($2.30/hr) = 2020 ($10.45)
1968 ($1.60/hr) = 2020 ($11.89)
1956 ($1.00/hr) = 2020 ($9.50)
1938 ($0.25/hr) = 2020 ($4.58).
It interesting on how low the 1938 adjusted minimum wage was. Using that number as a benchmark, is today’s minimum wage earners being overpaid?
Also, the average price of a gallon of gas in 1938 was $0.20/gal; in 2010 = $2.79/gal; in 2020 = $2.25/gal.
Therefore,
1938 (1 gal/min wage) = 0.80
2010 (1 gal / min wage) = 0.38
2020 (1 gal / min wage) = 0.31.
So on this one commodity upon which most people use, and rely on, it looks like the wage earner has improved quite well.
The bottom line is that increasing the minimum wage will benefit only the giverment. The bigger issue is the devaluation of the US currency, excessive US borrowing, and upcoming national debt crisis. Arguing $15/hr with these people is useless, they aren’t interested ... and after it passes, and all the bad things happen in the economy as predicted, there will be further efforts to get the giverment to fix the problem.
I also worked various jobs in local clothing and hardware stores, where I learned how to do things like deal with ornery customers, measure an inseam, iron shirts, cut pipe, wrap Christmas gifts and put bicycles together. Over one Christmas break, since I was then majoring in accounting, I was assigned the task of taking inventory in a hardware store that had at the time been in operation for more than 80 years. You could never believe how many hundreds of thousands of screws, bolts, washers and nails one store could accumulate over such a long period of time.
Jerry Clower story about the son who came home from college and told his Dad they needed to close the store for a day to do an inventory to determoine the profit of the store. Dad told hime to go way back there in the corner on the top shelf. Up there he would find a remaining piece of a bolt of cloth. Dad said Mom bought that bolt of cloth on the next day they opened the store. He said son, ‘That is inventory, all the rest of this in this store is PROFIT, now open this store and do business!
Thanks, but I have a stove and frying pan. And even a mixer attachment to turn bottom round into fresh E-Coli free hamburger.
Presently, for a XL whopper menu (fries, Coke included) in Nashville is $9.49.
If you do the $15 minimum wage, it’s probably going to escalate to around $12. But then you need to figure another 25 cents minimum on the city sales tax. Figure around $12.30 to $12.50 total For a family of four (two kids in the mix)....you’d be talking about $40 now for a dinner out.
With a gas grill and shopping cheaply...I can beat the BK pricing situation easily.
My first job was at an amusement park in 1975. Since it was consider ‘seasonal’ they did not have to pay us minimum wage legally. So they paid us $1.80 instead of $2, BUT if we were still on the payroll and worked a weekend after Labor Day (when the park was only open weekends till Oct 31), then they gave us a $.20/hr bonus for all the hours we had worked that summer.
Adjusted for inflation, that works out to $9.70 per hour in 2021.
Current federal minimum wage - $7.25
Washington state minimum wage - $13.69
Seattle minimum wage - $15.00 - $16.69 (depends on number of employees, health insurance, and tips)
Excellent, logical and clear explanation.
Easily understandable by any person of minimal ability to reason and think.
Which, alas, means it is beyond the understanding of Liberals.
No matter how high they raise the minimum wage, it still is the minimum wage. Prices increase, hours worked reduced, jobs lost and government assistance reduced when people earn more money. Also with price increases, purchases decrease. Way to go Biteme..
The thought behind my tag line came up when the first stimulus happened. I was already expecting serious inflation, but the government response to the government shutdown clearly pointed to huge - if not hyper- - inflation beginning in 2021.
And here we are...
Fact is, the minimum wage is the “floor” too the cost of living. When you raise the floor, you raise it all. The only ones to benefit are those that get a temporary benefit when they don’t lose their jobs and their income goes up before the general economy catches up. And then we are right back where we started.
And the federal government needs price inflation to monetize the debt.
Meanwhile, state and local governments need taxes. Taxes are generated from people buying and selling, producing and consuming. When the lockdowns reduced or eliminated that, well, let’s just say that states and municipalities are in a world of hurt. We’re just not hearing much about it. They are like mom and dad trying to do the monthly bills a year after they got laid off, and we’re the kids that they keep re-assuring that everything is fine - except they just got an eviction notice.
Buckle up.
When I lived in Seattle (I left there about ten years ago), I was telling people that the reason their dollar didn’t seem to go as far is it used to, even though prices were fairly stable, was because what went up was TAXES.
One of the reasons I moved to KY is because, though they have an income tax (offsetting all other taxes), the real estate taxes where I live are “real”. i.e. virtually non-existent.
Inflation adjustment.
$2.10 -> $9.84
I won’t bore you with my early work experience. The story has been told by several freepers. Mine was similar. Minimum wage was $1.25 per hour then.
I once read that something like a large percentage of Americans had their first job at McDonald’s. Mine was folding baby clothes in a textile factory.
No fruit or veggies, but half the store price for protein and ketchup.
In 2020, I wince every time I even glance up at the prices on a McDonald's menu.
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