Man this is a subject that burns me!
SEATTLE — Mayor Ed Murray presented on Thursday what he described as an imperfect but workable plan to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal minimum wage and one of the highest anywhere in the nation, through a series of complex and phased-in stages. Just as crucially, he said, the plan has broad political support, with a coalition of labor and business groups ready to push hard for it at the City Council, starting with the first hearings next week.
But the plan, which in many other cities might be seen as a liberal Democratic agenda at the frontier of social and economic engineering, was immediately attacked not from the mayor’s right, but from his left.
Kshama Sawant, a Socialist Alternative Party member who was elected to the Seattle City Council last year on a single-minded drive to raise wages, said the plan had been “watered down” by business interests on the mayor’s 24-member committee on income inequality, of which she was also a member
I always lead my debate off with saying “Why not $100 per hour?” just to get the “Progressive” to point out that there IS an outrageous number to pay hourly for what is unskilled labor. This crap is just destructive.
I worked minimum wage, back when I was still a student. Also I had an intern position where I think they paid me the minimum, they also paid for my housing for the summer too, and frankly I would have done the job for free because I was a college undergrad and I knew that work experience in my field was the one thing I would have none of when I graduated.
Still my other jobs, I was working with NO relevant experience. These all happened to be summer jobs, and both I worked multiple years, and each year I got a raise for the experience I was bringing to the table.
MINIMUM WAGE IS THE WAGE YOU START AT!!!! It is not, nor should it ever be a viable career path. If you are working minimum wage, and you see it as an indefinite job you are either working for an employer who doesn’t care if you stay or go, or you have no skills, and no ability to learn.
If its the first one, FIND A NEW JOB! If it’s the second one, get used to being poor, for there is NOTHING that will save you.
My father the other day was talking about this and he mentioned people with college degrees working minimum wage. I asked what their degree was in. I forget what it was, but it was one of those degrees people get who don’t ever want to be useful to society. He also mentioned certain parts of the country where the ONLY jobs are stocking shelves at Wal Mart. First, I don’t buy it, and second if that’s true MOVE! If you’re working minimum wage you can’t afford to have roots anyway.
Hell I friggin’ did, note that I don’t live in Maine anymore…you think I WANTED to move to Massachusetts?
It really pisses me off when bills like this go through because I feel like people are forcing me to pay for other people’s bad life choices, when I made sacrifices so I could support myself on my own….
Yep, but people DON’T want to actually have to do ‘work’ and all that…
I could see the writing on the wall when I made minimum wage. Even at that point in my life, if a “raise the minimum wage to $x.xx” vote came up, I voted against it. Most of my minimum wage coworkers couldn’t, and didn’t.
Raising the minimum wage doesn’t help anybody. Assuming everyone keeps their jobs, it will increase prices at a rate approximately equal to the wage increase (i.e. if the wage doubles, expect prices to double). Minimum wage workers won’t be better off, and everyone else will hurt for it. The most adversely affected – among the people who still have jobs after the inevitable round of lay-offs – are the people making just above minimum wage, who after the raise are back at the minimum (you didn’t seriously think the employer can afford to just give everyone a raise, did you?). The only – repeat, only – way prices don’t skyrocket is if a large chunk of workers fall victim to lay-offs.
Reynolds’ First Law (after Prof. Glenn Reynolds, I believe): “Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.” I’ll take it a step further and say that mandating those markers – including a higher wage – also undermines those character traits that produce success: hard work ethic, innovation, integrity, professionalism, etc. Why work hard to get what you want, when the government will mandate someone give it to you regardless?
[/rant] (I will now step down off my soap-box. 🙂 )
And then the vile proggies wonder why companies are going more to offshore labor… wait, it’s ‘corporate greed’.
Let’s face it, leftist economic policies are pretty much a cargo cult.
While I disagree w/ the ‘Get a different job or move’ meme, I do agree on the harm of raising the min. wage. My first experience was when I was in HS working at a pizza joint. The min. wage in IL was $4.25 and I got a raise to $4.50 after a month. Two months later they raised the min. wage to $4.50 so the brand new people were making the same as me, someone who was ‘experienced’.
Years later I was working R&D at a lighting company making $12 something. We had another guy in the shop who we had pulled from the factory floor and trained up to help us as a tech and he got a raise because of it. They raised the min. wage again so our asst. tech was again making min. wage even though he was more skilled than the others and I nor any other of the full techs in the shop got compensatory raises so the value of our skilled labor was devalued. Prices all over town, from gas to milk, went up.
Why do you disagree? Massachusetts is FILLED with people from someplace else. Why? Because they have tons of jobs that pay well. Same can be said about North Carolina’s Research Triangle. That’s just MY field. Maine in general has very few jobs, and fewer still that pay well. Further exacerbated is Northern Maine which has a shrinking population, as there are only so many jobs on the various farms and the few factories and such. If you want to make a life for yourself and you don’t fit into the narrow niche, it’s time to move.
The same can be said all over the country. Where do you think all the people of Detroit went?
I worked for less than minimum as a teen because farms weren’t under the minimum wage laws. I shoveled tons of cow crap for $1 a hour. At 15, It was fine with me. I did work a couple minimum wage jobs after the Marines, and I was always looking for something better. I think that if you are over 25 and still getting minimum wage, you might want to look at your life choices.
This all depresses me. Kids. Work harder and get good school and/or training and never wait. My waiting while I was getting my wife finished with her degree for me finish college turned out to be over 10 years of Walmart. Now I have shit for skills and a brain that isn’t going to learn anything useful as easily. Waiting is the enemy.
I took my first entry-level job working with mice as age 30. My Step-mom-in-law took her first job as a teacher in her 60s, after getting her degree the year before.
It does get harder the longer you wait, but you are not hopeless my friend!
This is another one of those cases where liberals seem to be at odds with themselves. They hate corporations, and Walmart is the worst, but they want to create an environment where only large, highly efficient corporations can survive.
“Walmart can afford to pay their workers more!”
Yeah, but your local “Women & Women First” lesbian bookstore can’t.