All right. Read it AGAIN for the third time. Let’s take every point (less) you bring up.1) I never accused you of believing in, defending, supporting or advocating for a higher minimum wage. I wanted to point out that the minimum wage is an all together bad idea, particularly for the young and the poor.
This was your first sentence in your reply ot me: I like to get this straight whenever someone uses the minimum wage canard anywhere.
So no, you didn't accuse me of anything. You simply took it for granted.
2) The job of a cleaning staff is very important to a hotel. However, it is not so important that a person should be paid more than the job is worth. The fact is that most house keepers at a major hotel chain make significantly MORE than minimum wage. they average close to $10 an hour and often make close to $30,000 per year.
Jim, since neither of us is in favor of the minimum wage, wouldn't you be just fine paying that staff $0.25 cents an hour. I mean after all, people are out of work. People need some money. If they'd work for it, you'd be satisfied right? By your rule of thumb, if they agreed to work for that amount that's all they would be worth, right?
How much is their wage really worth to the company? Only what they pay as the jobs, generally, don’t go begging. There is little training, they need no special skills and the greatest requirement is the willingness to do the job and NOT steal from the guests. There is no barrier to entry beyond normal physical activity.
Okay, great. Then the $0.25 cents an hour rule applies. If someone will work for it, that's the new value of what the employee is worth. Excellent! Now, where do you propse we hide this enclave of people who get a pittance for working in a hotel?
Do you want us to set up some sort of housing for them a few block from you? They have to go somewhere. They won't be able to buy food, clothing, housing... the list goes on Big Jim.
I don't mind paying $1 dollar a night extra to help pay their wages. I do get a little testy when I'm asked to fork over $40 dollars for a four night stay because the owner of the hotel was too big a cheapskate to pay a decent salary.
I do it, but I shouldn't have to.
3) You wrote: I think this is where some Conservatives lose their way. The housekeeping staff is the largest staff in the hotel. It’s the staff that comes into cotact with the guests the most. It is your liason to your customers, and yet you scrimp when it comes to paying them.
Let’s take a worst case scenario. A housekeeeper spends about twnety minutes in my room. They may spend as little as fifteen, perhaps even ten. Let’s go with twenty. If I’m paying $300 a night for my room, part of it is going to pay my housekeeper.
Let’s say a housekeeper is paid $12.00 an hour instead of $8.00. That’s $4 extra dollars an hour. The additional taken out of my room rentals fee would be $1.33 cents. In my original post, I addressed $300 dollar a night rooms. Are you telling me that an increase in housekeeping wages equal to 0.44% of my rental fee is going to destroy the hotel. Serioiusly?
If we’re talking about a $100 dollar a night room, the perentage would be 1.36%. Here again, is that going to put the hotel out of business? No. If that still doesn’t convince you, I as a patrion would be more than willing to pay $1.00 extra per night, if I knew it would go towards the Housekeeping staff making a decent living. That way the percentage increased to the hotel would be 0.11% and 0.33% resepctively.
*****Totally NON RESPONSIVE to what I wrote. It has NO relevance to the statement I made about the Minimum wage.
And this from the guy that posted an anti-minimum wage diatribe to me, when I hadn't advocated for a legislated minimum wage. It was your non-responsive post to me, that started this in the first place. Now you're off on an "non-responsive" post rant.
I take it you don't like others ignoring what you said to explain their own views. Certainly didn't stop you from doing the very same thing did it?
What you wrote is fine. Oh really? Jim seriously?
It is just irrelevant to what I said. I Wrote “2) Two people working full time minimum wage jobs with two children at home, live ABOVE the Federal Poverty level. By a lot. It isn’t the minimum wage that is the problem, It is after all a starting wage and should be limited to the least employable, as it mostly is. It is the lack of full time jobs in the Obama economy that is killing the workers of America at all economic levels.”
What the hell does what you wrote have to do with Federal Poverty Levels and the minimum wage? NOTHING. Besides, you missed a great deal of what goes into the cost break down of the room rates. The Primary driver of the rack rate for a room is LOCATION. What about occupancy rates?
Please use the "non-responsive" argument on someone who is unware of how this whole thing started.
Jim, if there is less occupancy, there are less housekeepers. The $1 rater still applies. Wow, this is rally sad.
NOBODY is willing to pay $1 MORE for anything that someone will supply the exact alternative for $1 less. That is why when you check rack rates at hotels the ones with the same ratings have almost identical prices. Any difference is born by brand preference. IE: Peopele will generally pay more for a Hilton than a Hampton, even if they have the same rating because Hiltons are considered a higher end brand, even though they are both Hilton owned name plates.
It is called competition and profits are gained by wringing every last bit of work out of every last bit of pay to an employee. It is gained generating more income than expenses.
You stated: You earlier talked about a man and woman with two children. Now you’re defending a wage of $30,160 dollars collectively. I don’t care what the government poverty figures are. That amount of money is not reasoned. It isn’t good for the couple. It’s isn’t good for the community they live in. Tell me which you would prefer, couples making $30,160 dollars per year, or couples making $48,000 dollars per year living in your neighborhood?
The family of four is a man and a woman with two children making $30,160 per year collectively. Regardless of what you think, that is significantly higher than the Federal Poverty level. Does it mean that they are flush with cash. Hell no. It simply means that they are not POVERTY STRICKEN. They are certainly poor. However in MANY places in America that is plenty to live on. Not every one lives in California, New York or even Seattle.
Jim, you honestly think a family of four can make it these days on $30k. You defend it here as if it were a pretty good income. What did you say it was, 126% of the government assigned poverty level figure?
I'll let your comments stand. I think they accurately reveal you..
As for good for the community, I believe it would be better if they made a million dollars a year. However, here in the real World, we don’t pay housekeepers that much. If they made that much they wouldn’t live in my neighborhood anyway. Good for the community is irrelevant to market forces.
Take a look at our communities these days. Tell me it is irrelvent how many people live near poverty in them. You can repeat that it's irrelevent as many times as you like, our communities are not healthy if we have large population bases of poverty stricken (or close to it) people..
You wrote that you are not in favor of unions or the minimum wage and then use the exact same arguments that Unions and Democrats make for Unions and the minimum wage. They call it the Living Wage. It is another name for socialism and government intervention into the markets. Before you know it you are mandating the need for medical insurance and what that insurance will cover as apart of that living wage and BINGO Obama Care.
Once again, I did not advocate for a legislated minimum wage, and despite the language I use, I would like to see people voluntarily help people out who are struggling to get by. You can't accuse me of advocating for unions or legislated minimum wage, so now you accuse me of using their langage. Yeah, and I use English too.. That's two strickes!
I did understand exactly what you wrote. Virtually all of what you wrote was unresponsive as to the idea of a minimum wage it is more your opinion of just wages. Unfortunately, for you, nobody gives a crap what you think about other peoples wages. It is completely irrelevant to a market economy.
Un-respnsive, and this from a guy that was unreasponsive to my post from his first reponse on.
You are the dumb ass, dumb ass!
No you are. LMAO
I support market based Capitalism to a point, but it isn't perfect either. Sticking to that montra, we have financed a monster in China, and dislodged tens of millions of American workers. We saw hundreds of years worth of patents and technology transferred to China, gratis. Some of it was realated to war technologies, ICBMs, MIRV Technology, and more.
I believe that base pay should be higher than $8.00. I would like to see some different methods of getting that done. I'd like to see it done voluntarily by business owners and the public.
If it were part of some plan with a catchy phrase that people could get behind if they supported it, I think some people would support it. I think that some businesses might find it advantagious in that they might get a following of people who liked the idea and bought in.
I'm not sure why this threatens you. I do think there's a certain entertainment value watching you melt down though.