Posted on 05/04/2014 11:33:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
One of the most liberal Representatives in Congress wants California to raise its minimum wage to $26 an hour.
Appearing on Crossfire on Friday, co-host Newt Gingrich asked Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) whether it was a good idea for the mayor of Seattle to propose a minimum wage of $15 an hour. Lee said, "good for him."
"In California, more than likely from what I remembered, a living wage where people could live and take care of their families and move toward achieving the American dream was about $25, $26 an hour," Lee said.
When pressed further, Lee said she would "absolutely" support it for California and claimed it would not cause more unemployment....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Careful what you wish for.
Has anyone bothered to notice that by raising the minimum wage, besides eventually lowering buying power, lowering the numbers of people employed it also raises workers into higher tax brackets and the government will happily fleece them of more of the wages through income taxes.
Also another side effect that to maintain parity the ones on Welfare must have their monies and benefits increased too.
Once a person understands this then you will also understand that the eventual goal must be the total destruction of the middle class and the economy?
http://www.smgov.net/Departments/Finance/content.aspx?id=11969
Babe:
Why stop there? Hell, shoot for the stars and make it college education money @ $100 per hour.
> You can tell they have never run a business
In their world, businesses don’t exist to make a profit. They only exist to serve their needs with the permission of the king. It really makes you wonder how our younger generation can be so full of knowwledge yet can be so stupid and lacking in wisdom to understand the error in this type of thinking...
The net result of people discovering they’re going to pay considerably more for their fast food burger is more people not buying the fast food burger. More unemployment. And more people going from skilled (and harder) jobs with the same wage taking easier minimum wage jobs. Bad all around.
Businesses exist to make money. If any business owner could make their business a success without having to hire help, they would do so. Why would you add an extra, unneeded cost to your business? You wouldn't. Including all the sanctimonious civic leaders who want the businesses to hire large amounts of people.
I think California should raise the state minimum wage to $1M an hour and finish the job of driving out all businesses.
I actually WOULD like to see California or some other loser state just do that.
Then the people that live their can see the REAL EFFECT of their vaunted “living wage”, and have to deal with it. At that point, they’d likely get it thrown out...perhaps invalidating all local/state and maybe federal minimum wage laws - which should not exist in the first place.
Your numbers are off, way off. Labor now is 25% of the retail price on average in the food industry. The other 75% is overhead, food, electricity etc.
So if a 4 dollar hamburger was made with labor making say $8/hr and that wage was tripled, only the labor portion triples. So the hamburger costs goes from $4 -> $7 dollars. A huge increase but not the increase you suggest. A $7 -> $10 etc. Bad yes, but keep it real.
$26 per hour?! They want a full time burger flipper to make $54,000 per year?!
So if a 4 dollar hamburger was made with labor making say $8/hr and that wage was tripled, only the labor portion triples.
An increase in wages also causes an increase in the employers expense to employ; over and above just the increase of the wages themselves anywhere from 30% to 40% - the so called loaded rate, the true cost to employ someone. In addition to the employers share of Social Security and Medicare, there are Federal and state unemployment taxes (FUTA & SUI) and workers compensation insurance premiums, all of which are based on a percentage of wages paid along with other waged based premiums like basic group term life insurance (GTL) which is taxable to the employee over $50k of coverage.
Then there is overtime pay at 1.5 times the base hourly rate which in California is paid not just for hours worked in a week over 40, but also over 8 hours on any day. California also requires employers to pay out at termination all accrued PTO (vacation) hours at the rate of pay at termination whether that termination is voluntary or for cause. So if I have a terminating employee making $10 per hour with 20 hours of accrued PTO, I have to pay out $200, but if their rate of pay is raised to $26 per hour, that payout now becomes $520. And keep in mind also that value of accrued PTO has to be carried as a liability on the employers books and such an increase in on the books liabilities devalues the companys worth.
So not only will employers do more with less workers (and/or incorporate more self service and automation), and utilize more part time workers working under 30 hours a week, they will also eliminate overtime where ever possible and eliminate benefits not required by law, such as company paid life insurance and paid vacations.
Another cost to consider is that if you raise the hourly rate of the lowest paid, the least qualified, most inexperienced or entry level workers to $26 per hour, what will an employer be forced to do with those workers already making $26 per hour? You dont think they will want to make more than the people they are perhaps training and supervising? If I am a manager or supervisor and Im not making anymore or just barely more than this new minimum wage, what is my motivation to work for minimum wage for doing more than a minimum wage job. It just wont be the minimum wage workers getting wage increases but it will have to trickle up.
Unless of course Ms. Lee is proposing a full out old school Soviet/Cuban/Venezuela full out Communist model of worker compensation where all workers regardless of skill, experience and ability make the very same wage in which case everyone from the CEO down will be paid $26 per hour and no more.
The flip side of these so called living wage initiatives is the why should anyone be entitled make more than a living wage and I think that is just where this is eventually going.
Of course Ms. Lee and others in the highest ranks of favored political classes will get their special perks and live well. The rest of us will be lined up and shot for gathering firewood to keep our families from freezing or exceeding our monthly bread rations.
Do I hear $100? This is what allowing absolute idiots to vote will get you .at least in CA.
Why not a thousand dollars or a million? If you got go, go first class.
$1 million per hour...let’s make everyone a millionaire. That is equality!!
At the end of this month, we are Going Galt, putting 2 part-time workers out of work and ending services to close to 200 people who need it...
Thanks zero & company...you got what you wanted. Small business, the lifeblood of this country, is now ending...
Because they are more chimps than people who vote.
"In California, more than likely from what I remembered, a living wage where people could live and take care of their families and move toward achieving the American dream was about $25, $26 an hour," Lee said.From what she remembers? Oh yeah, represntatives live high on the public hog, give or take any kickbacks or "campaign contributions".
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