Posted on 07/28/2006 9:31:35 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Wonder what welfare pays per week?
My first job over 30 years ago paid $6.00/hr. I can't believe you could even find a job that offered a wage as low as $5.15/hr. The free market works. Instead of voting to raise the minimum wage, they should rescind the law altogether.
The article didn't say it, but the Senate democrats also fought a republican proposal to raise the minimum wage and provide incentives for small businesses to cover the costs.
In other words, if the senate democrats hadn't voted against it, the senate would have approved an increase in the minimum wage for these "poor people" the democrats say they love.
And now the republicans in the house will also pass an increase for those poor people, but the democrats will oppose it because it will hurt their fat-cat union and lawyer lobbies.
But the newspaper will blame it all on republicans.
To LaTourrette, I say "You can't justify a $5.15 minimum wage. You can't justify ANY minimum wage. But once you've adopted an unjustifiable minimum wage, there is no rational way to pick the "correct" number, because the ONLY rational way to pick a wage is for an employer and employee to agree on a fair wage, and the "minimum wage" circumvents with that process.
"I can't believe you could even find a job that offered a wage as low as $5.15/hr."
Wanna bet? :)But then again, just last week I had to "explain" "cost of living" to a young man from CA who was dumbfounded at how "cheap" things are around here. ;)
That being said, the last thing I want is a "raise" in the minimum wage, which benefits no one but "govt." in the form of increased taxes on said increased wages. In the meantime, since the choice of employers is to either decrease employees or raise prices or both, the net result is to a: increase the number of minimum wage earners by encompassing those earning more than the present minimum but less than the new minimum and b: that said minimum wage earners end up even worse off than they were before the raise. :(
Wal-Mart and McDonalds both pay an average of over $10/hr.
What kind of jobs pay $5.15/hr? Not trying to be argumentaitve, I just don't see or hear of wages this low.
Yes we all long for the good ole days when employee and employer would come together and negotiate a wage.......the mines, the meat packing houses, the textile mills, the domestic servants for two dollars a day....ah for the days of unrestricted capitalism....
Don't our GOP Congressmen and Senators have any cojones at all?!
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
Thomas Sowell would be proud of you. :-)
If the idea here is to ensure that full time employees are guaranteed a "living wage" then there is a simpler way to do this than by raising the federally mandated minimum age.
The government needs to simply write a check to every worker in America that makes up the difference between what they earn in a year and what they need to comfortably live on. This can be paid for out of a special government fund set up specifically for this purpose and doesn't need to come out of the general fund. The way to pay for this is for the government to PRINT EXTRA MONEY to exactly cover the amount needed by this program.
Now, some people out there might argue that the government printing extra money and putting it into circulation doesn't actually put anything of real value into the economy but simply results in out of control inflation and an erosion of peoples savings, and those people would be right. But, in the end, it's the exact same thing as the federal government mandating higher minimum wages.
Too many people are applauding instead of recognizing the sarcasm.
That's why I think we need to index the minimum wage for inflation. It's so low, it's not really hurting anything now. Indexing it for inflation will take the issue off the table forever, but will continue to keep the minimum wage from being a problem. (Indexing a wage to inflation instead of wage growth will allow it to fall further and further behind. That is why Social Security is indexed to wage growth.)
They want to increase the minimum wage by 40% over two years.
While few people actually work for the minimum wage, this will shift result in shifting a lot of hourly pay scales up and will cause a significant jump in inflation.
Socialism doesn't work.
My children are in violation of this law.....
If I find someone willing to be my domestic servant for $2/day, how do you have any say in that contract?
Likewise, what business is it of mine how much you choose to pay your servant? But out of curiosity, how much would you pay?
true true
If we can get together to use the government to force the "robber baron" to give us more than we are worth, why can't we use the government to force him to pay us for not even working at all?
I agree the minimum wage needs to be adjusted. Take the original (.25 in 1938) and adjust to todays dollars. The wage would be about $3.50!
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