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Raise the minimum wage? Okay. Fine. Require employers to pay more to their lowest wage earners. Then you can expect those same employers to (a) cut the number of jobs they can offer, (b) reduce the wages of other employees, or (c) increase the prices of their goods/services.
This is simple economics.
The minimum wage is not meant to support an independent adult for an extended period of time, let alone one who needs to support a family. The minimum wage is meant to be earned by kids who are doing temporary seasonal work or other unskilled laborers who must work towards a higher pay grade. If that means becoming more educated and/or looking for another employer, so be it.
There is no excuse for being stuck at the minimum wage.
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See also:
“Minimum Wage, Maximum Trouble” by James Sherk
What about people who come to this country with a family and is unskilled? I agrre with you for the most part im just curiose.
Like everyone else, they’re not entitled to any particular job of any particular pay grade. They’re responsible for themselves.
But the fact is that many of those “uneducated workers” cant get educated or find a new job. To get educated they need money which they clearly dont have if they are working at minimum wage to begin with. besides that many of these people are raising a family so even if thier respnsibal for themselves (which seems a little cold considering there our fellow citizens) there children need to be taken care of. That IS our responsibilty. So we can either raise he minimum wage OR there gonna go on welfare pretty soon anyway which rovides no incentive for them to work at all.
I sympathize, but let’s not lose sight of what makes this country go around, i.e. capitalism. It is not our country’s responsibility to hand anything to immigrants besides the opportunity for them to earn a living. And that does not include paying a person more than what his job is actually worth. That’s crooked.
How the head of a family makes ends meet is his responsibility. Taking care of his children is his responsibility. I’d say it’s pretty “cold” to force more money out of employers to pay for the livelihood of immigrant families, when taking care of employees’ families is not their responsibility.
Looking at the plight of an immigrant family as a one-step scenario, where the whole family comes to the US at the same time and expects to integrate into our workforce and education system immediately, is shortsighted. A family wanting to immigrate would be wise to have part of the family come through, establish themselves, and then send for the rest of the group later on. That’s how many of our ancestors wound up in the United States.
Sure, splintering a family is painful, but it’s practical. And that’s about as fair as it gets.
more then a job is actually worth? well what exactly is a 9-5 job worth in the US? somebody has to be a grape picker. Somebody has to be a janitor. somebodys got to do the countless jobs that pay minimum wage. education wouldnt fix that because the jobs simply wont go away. Ive seen the minimum wage in my sate. people cant live off that kind of money. Poeple work hard hours for days one end, doing manuel labor on money that barely makes ends meet. i say that kinf of job is WORTH more then that of a lawyer or poltician or banker or any of the count DESK jobs that get paid a lot more. these people work a heck of a lot harder thne those in the white colloar offices. but they are stuck getting paid a heck of a lot less then these fortuante few. why? becasue however i feel a collage duactaion is ranked a lot higher then hard work in our society.
(1) A job is worth its fair market value, i.e. it is worth what employers in a particular industry are willing to pay for the services rendered, without being coerced by some socialist minimum wage law. The fair market value of a particular job may indeed be well below ‘minimum wage’.
(2) Yes, somebody has to be a janitor, a grape picker, whatever. But not somebody who needs to support a family. If you think a person should be able to provide for a family doing that type of menial labor, in this country, at this time… Well, I don’t know what to say to that beyond “you’ve got to be kidding me.” That runs entirely counter to our modern American system.
(3) Yes, some people can’t live off of minimum wage. Since when does minimum wage guarantee that you’ll be able to cover your living expenses?
(4) Plenty of people who hold white-collar jobs work just as hard or harder than those who hold blue-collar jobs, and vice versa. The amount that your work is worth is a matter of economics, which unfortunately often doesn’t line up with the amount of effort you expended. That having been said– If you bust your ass but you still can’t make ends meet at a particular job, then you need to switch things up. Either change your line of work, reduce your expenses, or move to an area with a lower cost of living. Do something besides look to the government to bail your ass out.
Are you saying that janitors grape pickers and etc. do not have families to support? That’s just naive. The fact is that they do. Those are exactly the kind of jobs that you GET if you don’t have a college education. And the thing is not everyone has a college education or the means to get one. College is expensive and scholarships extremely difficult to obtain. Student loans are burdensome and the government doesn’t help. Not everyone was raised in household that value education. These factors put together means that not everyone will be lucky enough to get a college education. In fact only one in four Americans achieve a bachelors degree. Without this education that is so difficult to get, you are doomed, without luck to minimum wage jobs. Are you saying that the huge percent of people working these jobs for years on end don’t have the right to raise a family because the market dictates that to be true?
Your assumpation that minimum wage was set up for kids working over the summer is just false. Even if that were true thats not what it has become today. People do support families with minimum wage and without an incease of that wage may be unable to continue doing so. That doesnt mean the families will disaperar. it just means that they will go on welfare and be taken care of by the govermnt. Either way there WILL be goverment interference. The only choice at hand is how. Either through an incentive twards having a job, minimum wage or otherwise, or a welfae state. I would choose an increase in minimum wage.
Employers do not dictate fair market value for a job. That’s the whole point minimum wage was established. Your right that some jobs, mostly white collar jobs, have a clear market value. Why? Because the workers of those jobs have the ability to negotiate. If the job doesn’t pay enough they can find another that will. This is because they are skilled labor. They were fortunate enough to get a college education, most likely because of family cash. There is a limited amount of people who can do the specialized skill they were taught to do. That gives them room for negotiation and with that a high salary. However there are countless people willing to do anything for an unskilled labor job. Why? Because that’s the only job they can get. Because of the surplus of people willing to work employers could give them any amount of money and still get employees. The employers realize this and take advantage of it. Without minimum wage we would be back to the industrial revolution where employers kept there workers like slaves being provided room and board at a cost too high for there salary to cover leaving them forever indebted to there employer whether they liked it or not. Minimum wage protects the working class in our country from a market that could care less if hey lived or died. We are above living in the kind of society where we are cold to our less fortunate brethren. My ethics my empathy and my religion all urge me to raise the minimum wage for without it we risk falling back to a time where you were better off dead then poor.
So ive offerd basicly two arguments one bieng based more on empathy and the other on logic. Feel free to debate whichever intrests you more or both.
(1) I didn’t say that current grape-pickers and the like don’t have families to support. My point is that it’s irresponsible to start a family or to expect to be able to support your current one doing a job that an employer doesn’t value enough to pay the cost of such support. It’s not any employer’s job to cover the cost of living for any employee’s family; an employer merely compensates his employees at the market’s value for their services.
(2) Student loans are burdensome, but why should the government pay for anyone’s education, considering that the money used to do so is being taken from other taxpayers? That’s Robin-Hood-style robbery.
(3) Let’s be careful with our vocabulary. Having the opportunity to raise a family is a right; having the know-how or the resources to do so is not. If you can’t budget your finances accordingly, you can’t raise a family.
(4) To clarify, I’m not saying that the minimum wage was set up for summer workers, etc. I’m saying that’s how it should be used today: in a transient sense, by workers that are either going to move upward or outward.
(5) Increasing the minimum wage hurts the very people it’s designed to help. When employers are forced to pay employees more, they compensate for the cost by cutting the jobs of the lowest-paid employees. Those who try to support families on minimum wage are playing a dangerous game. They need to find a way to make themselves more marketable. Even burger-flippers can learn on-the-job and eventually apply for management positions. Upward mobility exists, even for those without a college degree. People have to keep their eyes open and learn how to be at least a little bit shrewd in job-related matters.
(6) The general economy dictates the fair market value for a job, including employers. If there’s more or less demand for a particular type of work, pay increases or decreases respectively. If consumers are willing to pay more or less for a particular type of product, the salaries of the workers who produce it will be higher or lower, respectively. If an employer wants to hire more people than his competitor, he’ll offer more money to potential employees. If he wants to pay employees less because his budget is strained (or for whatever other reason he might have, like not wanting to lay people off), then that should be his prerogative.
(7) The current employment rate in this country is 95%. Going by that statistic, this surplus of people waiting for menial labor jobs that you’re talking about doesn’t exist. If it did, yes, that would screw with the free-market principles that I just talked about. But it doesn’t. I’m fully aware that there are pockets of unemployment scattered around the country, but there are not so many unemployed people that they trip over each other whenever they try to find a job somewhere else.
I agree that we should give to our less fortunate bretheren. I’m all for people volunteering their time, money, and efforts– families helping other families; neighbors and friends pitching in to help others get back on their feet. I am, however, in cold opposition to any government mandate that redistributes income. And that’s exactly what socialist institutions like welfare programs and minimum wage laws do. They take a greater amount of money from those who have more of it available to them, and they give it to those who have less of it — without respecting the free market, without requiring the self-discipline of true selfless giving, and without determining who deserves what (which is a decision that is much better left up to small communities).
I can see how one’s ethics, empathy, and religion might compel a person to give more of himself and his possessions to others, willingly. I do not see how one’s ethics, empathy, and religion necessarily compel him to force resources out of others by law.
I dont know ,i just dont feel there are that many well paying jobs out there. I dont think the market fairly predicts the value of a job. As for the surpluys of workers argument i think that the illegal immigrant problem in our counrty means that there are a lot of people looking for a job right now. It goes outside the 5 percent unemplyment rate you were talking about. So the emloyers dont have to negotiate with workers for a fair price. The worker will take howver much the employer is willing to give or the boss will find an illegal immagrant who will.
I happen to agree with you that raising minimum wage wont fix anything. Mostly because the emplyer can switch over to machines or hire illegal immagrants or have cutbacks or do any number of things to avoid paying the increased wage. They’ll do anything to insure there bottom line doesnt get hurt. I just think we have to do SOMTHING. Its not fair that people in wealthy areas get to go to better schools and move on to go to9 a college because they can afford. Then they get better payiong jobs. They never had to worry about getting knifed in school or having textbooks that refer to the soviet union in present tense. I odnt have to worry about college. I know ill get in. SO many people arnt as lucky. Its not equal oppurtunity in our counrty. Except for rare exceptions you stay in the social class you were born into. You never had a chance. You schools were worse your enviorment was worse… not many people can over come that and they shgouldnt have to. I doubt i could have. Yet Im much more likely to succeed because of luck. Whats equal about that? I dont have any solution. I mean social ism just doesnt work and isnt fair. I just dont know. It doesnt seem right.
(1) There are plenty of well-paying jobs in this country. People need to educate themselves, circulate their resumes, grab a bottom-rung job, and work their way up. Landing a job that feeds multiple mouths, right off the bat, is rare. Expecting to do so is foolishly unrealistic.
(2) I can agree that, in some instances, the value of a job is skewed. (e.g. I’m not so sure athletes need to be making millions of dollars to play games for a living.) However, I still believe that our free market, in general, fairly dictates the value of employment. I realize that just about everybody thinks that they should be making more money, but, that’s human nature and that doesn’t change my outlook.
(2) The 95 percent employment rate refers to documented (i.e. legal) American citizens. And even if it DID include illegal immigrants, my argument still holds. 95% is, historically, very high, and shows that people in this country are, overwhelmingly, finding jobs.
(3) Employers choose the lowest bidder to get work done. That’s how the free market operates, so you can’t fault them for that. You CAN fault them, however, for hiring people who aren’t supposed to be in this country to begin with. So if our government comes around to enforcing immigration laws and employers get burned for hiring illegal workers– well, they had it coming.
(4) Let me talk in a broader sense about tinkering with the free market, education, and ‘the opportunity to succeed’ in general–
It’s not for us to legislate “fairness”. That’s misguided. Life, in about a million ways, isn’t fair, and no series of laws is going to change that.
Some people are born into wealth while others are born into poverty. Such a situation isn’t necessarily ‘wrong.’ Suppose one set of parents worked hard all their lives to provide a good living for their children, while another set of parents didn’t work hard at all to provide anything for their children. For the children in the latter case, the situation is ‘unfortunate’, but it is not ‘wrong’. As such, the situation is not for society to correct– it is for the individuals in the situation to overcome.
I insist on being precise with terminology here for the sake of clarity. When a situation is wrong, there is a moral imperative for society to advocate for something better. When a situation is unfortunate, it is primarily the responsibility of the individual in the situation to surmount it. Sure, as a Christian, I believe in providing charity on my own account to help people in such need, but I do NOT believe in passing laws that take money from other (more economically fortunate) people in order to equalize everybody’s economic situation. That’s indirect theft. THAT is ‘wrong’.
(5) I don’t have a great solution to the situation either. Although, I do favor concepts like school vouchers — putting more power (i.e. money) in the hands of individuals — so that people can pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and succeed or fail by their own merits.
I agree with Count Mazz. One should be beyond minimum wage before trying to raise a family, bring a family to this country, or pursue other financially strenuous tasks (buy a home, new car, etc). Working a minimum wage job should not be a result of a lack of education. Everyone in this country is given a free education, if you mess it up, be prepared to work minimum wage. This also extends to higher education; sure you may have to go in considerable debt, but that beats a lifetime of working minimum wage.
As for the value of minimum wage…I have occasionally been jealous of people I see doing manual labor (painters, mowers, field-hands). When I get stressed out at work, tired of the daily grind, it would seem like a vacation to spend all day outdoors doing something “easy”. And then I realize why I get paid so much more. My job requires that I have original thoughts every day. This is much more difficult than minimum wage jobs where you are paying for labor, not skill. This is what drives the value of most jobs in this country.
Finally, when I get concerned about those unfortunate individuals who do live in poverty I think about this. Every social creature on this planet has a natural pecking order, there always has to be someone at the bottom. If we throw all of our resources at eliminating the bottom rungs of society, we’ve become a socialist nation, which has been proven not to work. A 5% unemployment rate, and roughly 10-12% who live below the governments poverty line is doing pretty good. Furthermore, people in the US who are considered poor, have a far higher standard of living than poor and middle class people in other parts of the world. I’d much rather be poor in the US than in China.
Wow. I was right on the verge of agreeing with Count Mazz. Then Glen went and opened his mouth. You have got to be kidding me. You are jealous of minimum wage workers? You feel doing strenuous physical labor for hours on end is easy? You feel that struggling for decent food and housing sounds like a vacation? These are the words of someone completely out of touch with the hardships that so many Americans have to deal with. How dare you say that only those who make money deserve to have a family? The contempt that you show the impoverished in our country is stunning. The fact that you feel that the U.S. provides an equal education to its citizens reveals a naiveté that only a very sheltered life could have fostered. The schools in Harlem do not even compare to Schools in Redding or Easton. There are school districts where more then half the student body will not graduate. Districts where the teachers don’t care and students worry far more over getting knifed then they do over the latest history exam. It is not the students “mess it up”. It was messed up before they ever got there. Messed up because no one expected them to succeed or cared if they did. Messed up because they live in areas of our country that have been forgotten. Messed up because they feel they too have been forgotten. Socialism? This is the farthest thing from. This is financial anarchy. The winners end up rich the losers dead. Compared to that even the failed policy of socialism sounds sort of attractive. Sure its better to be poor in the U.S. then China but i guess i have higher expectations for our country then to do better then China. I believe i live in the greatest nation on earth. I intend to keep it that way.
(1) Don’t twist our words. We’re not saying that people who work at minimum wage don’t deserve to have families. We’re saying that you can’t expect to provide for a family without having worked up the ladder to a higher-paying job.
There’s doing something in a financially-savvy way, and then there’s doing something in a financially-incompetent way. What you “deserve” is irrelevant.
(2) Hiking the minimum wage is socialist, any way you cut it. It forces money out of employer’s pockets (higher-income individuals) and hands it to employees (lower-income individuals), regardless of who deserves what. In fact, it’d be more accurate to call it communist.
(3) You talk about teachers not caring, students getting knifed, no one expecting them to succeed– Okay. You paint a provocative picture, but what solutions do you propose? I hear a bleeding-heart story, but I don’t hear a practical way to remedy the situation.
The typical liberal response is to throw money at the problem, but we’ve been sinking government funds into inner-city schools for years on end without seeing any results. It seems to me that this is not a situation that our government can reconcile by forcing charity in the form of taxes out of the rest of us.
(4) America was not made great by social engineering and Robin-Hood-style economic redistribution. It was made great by people who, despite the hardships they started with, took it upon themselves to be successful, and upon achieving their success, gave back to the country that enabled it, and faded from the limelight thereafter.
Pick your favorite “rags to riches” story. Such people didn’t ask for handouts; they didn’t receive handouts. Upon taking personal responsibility for their situations, they prospered nonetheless.
No, i was NOT twisting your words. To start with agree with you about minimum wage and have said so many times throughout this post. What I was objecting to was NOT the arguments that you already made. Which is why I hadn’t commented on this post in a while. What I objected to was Glen’s phrasings of those arguments. What he said about education, as if everyone had a fair education in this country, was naive. Further it blamed the victims of desolate areas rather then having sympathy for those who have lived lives most Americans couldn’t even imagine. The way he spoke about minimum wage jobs betrayed a level of contempt for lower middle class families that I never sensed in your bloggings. The life of someone receiving minimum wage is NOT a vacation as he put it. That phrasing is not merely insulting it is elitist. I very much doubt that his job is nearly as difficult as the back breaking labor of those that he scorns. My post was not directed at you it was directed at Glen. Further it was not directed at the opinion of not raising minimum wage but at the arguments he used to justify that opinion. I didn’t twist any of his words. Its right there for everyone to read. He wasn’t trying to hide his flagrant elitism so there wasn’t exactly a need for twisting. As for fixing the problem i would either propose a federal based education rather then a state one OR school vouchers. I never pretended that socialism is the right response but it’s certainly a better one then doing nothing. Anything in this case is better then doing nothing.