Archived CA to Raise Min Wage to $10

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My thoughts. ^.^

I like how it says "He added that, "Nothing will make small businesses happier. This will stimulate the economy, as well as helping people's lives." Large companies will have to layoff or schedule less hours and not hire as much :(

3 years to come into effect though.
 
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I seriously hate when people throw out Australia's minimum wage. There economy is different than America's and I'm pretty positive its much more expensive to live there. Sorry, I could go on a rant about this, so I'll just shut up.
 
Geez, as if CA wasn't already fucked as it is. In the state's rural districts unemployment is almost uniformly in the double digits and that's where you have the majority of the unskilled labor. California is such a mess.
I like how it says "He added that, "Nothing will make small businesses happier. This will stimulate the economy, as well as helping people's lives."
Minimum wage crushes small business and increases unemployment.

Only in the short run. But yes are are correct. In the long run however, with more money, people's spending power goes up. When spending power goes up, demand for goods and services increases. With this comes more revenue and the need for more employment. With leads to unemployment to decrease.

Also, backroom, I believe that figure is close to $12.00 today.
 
Said the guy who prolonged the depression and sent Japanese Americans to internment camps.

Says the guy who any credible historian will agree brought the entire country out of the worst depression we have ever had. Sure you are not confusing him with Hoover? It's called the New Deal. Look it up.

Also, what you are doing is called "perverse presentism". Looking back now, we can see how wrong japanese internment was. But you have to remember, these were people living in a time when the entire world was at war. Pearl harbor had just happened. It was their version of September 11th... the worst attack on the United States in history. Countless millions around the world were dead, and a blood thirsty killer (Hitler, the Italians, and their allies the Japanese) were hell bent on landing on US soil and killing as many of us as possible. (and FYI, nazi's did land on US soil)

So yes, people overreacted and moved Japanese americans out of the west coast because there was a very real possibility of a Japanese invasion and there wasn't time to find out who was an enemy and who was a friend. Was it wrong? Yes. But these were people living through a world war that impacted the lives of damn near everyone on the planet. These were people who just had American civilians and soldiers killed on US soil in an attack that makes September 11th look like a day at the park. They didn't send Japanese americans to internment camps because they hated Japanese americans. They did it because the whole damn world was going crazy and at the time it seemed like a necessary evil to prevent the United States from being conquered.

It's easy to sit here in the present, having full knowledge of the situation, and pass judgement. Chances are, if you had been alive at the time, living through that war, and knowing only what limited information people knew back then, you would have been 100% on board with japanese internment just like damn near everyone else was.

Go pass judgement on American's living through possibly the worst time in US and world history from your comfortable life of peace and processed goods being delivered to your door step. Let me know when you live through a world war and manage to not overreact and make zero mistakes when dealing with every situation.

FYI - people are taught about Japanese interment in school so that we don't make the same mistake again. (i.e. like locking up all Muslim's after 9/11 like some people wanted to do) You are taking this teaching and saying "Oh everyone was a racist anti-japanese thug!" back then. That isn't the point at all. We in the present can see that it was wrong because it was racist and unnecessary.... and the point is that we should never do it again for that reason.... not that the people at the time who created and supported the policy were evil, because they weren't. They were just scared because it was a terrible time for the United States and the whole world. Fear can make people do crazy things. Japanese interment wasn't motivated by hate as you want people to think, it was motivated by fear. And the lesson is not to let fear make policy.

If you want to see interment motivated by hate rather than fear, then go look up Nazi camps. Those are camps constructed using hate as motivation. US Japanese interment camps were constructed using fear as a motivation. Nazi camps were designed to kill, American camps were designed to relocate until the crises was over and they could figure out WTF was going on.
 
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"That isn't how wealth is created. Their spending power hasn't gone up, it's just been reallocated at a net loss. If people having more money could stimulate the economy, why not just hand everyone a million dollars? What could go wrong?"

Because it is a question of magnitude.... Not everything is black and white.

Remember the stimulus checks that every single american got mailed after the recession started? Funny how people forget so easily.

Giving people a *small* increase in money stimulates the economy.... giving them a massive increase leads to high inflation.
 
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Said the guy who prolonged the depression and sent Japanese Americans to internment camps.
Can't argue about the racism involved in the internment camps.
Even Dr. Suess was guilty of that sad to say.
But there is some serious debate on the first comment.

We could cover a short list of his other accomplishments if you want.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)- hired more than three million men to work on various projects.
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)- used the Tennessee River to provide electricity for the depressed area.
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)- created the Public Works Administration to provide aid to cities for construction and the National Recovery Administration to help businesses.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)- corrected abuses which led to the stock market crash.
Works Progress Administration (WPA)- hired many people for a variety of projects including in the arts.
Social Security Act - Created the Social Security System.
 
So, if so many people are against a minimum wage, am I right in assuming that if there is a minimum wage, it does not need to keep up with inflation? So in 2015, 2020, 2025, 2035, 2050, it should still be $8? When a loaf of bread may very well cost $10?

Also, if minimum wage were to be abolished, could those who are against it paint a dreamy, fantastical picture of what this perfect economy would look like? Serious question because I'm honestly curious about the answers to these questions:

Remember, you know what the real world is like in terms of labor vs manpower, and how this affects guest satisfaction and, ultimately, the great almighty profit....since you work at Target and have firsthand experience.

  • How much could one expect their wage to be?
  • How many hours could they expect to get?
  • Would workload still far outstrip manpower, or would it line up, since everyone is being paid the $x.xx figure from question 1 and the labor can be "afforded"?
  • Given the answers to questions 1 and 2, WHO EXACTLY is the projected typical employee at Target (and retail in general)? Obviously someone who can afford to do it recreationally, since real bills can't be paid on such a wage/hours.
  • Will these people be happy doing it, do you think?
  • How will all of this line up to affect guest satisfaction and, ultimately, the great almighty hallowed profit?

I'm honestly curious what sort of world you anti-minimum-wage people are envisioning when you think about it in your head. I always see people hating on minimum wage, but there's never any mention of how they expect it to be. I'd like to know.
 
Because it is a question of magnitude.... Not everything is black and white.

Remember the stimulus checks that every single american got mailed after the recession started? Funny how people forget so easily.

Giving people a *small* increase in money stimulates the economy.... giving them a massive increase leads to high inflation.
Funny how you say things aren't black and white and then follow that with what is essentially very black white - that small monied stimulus works, but too much leads to inflation. There is no internal logic to this.

Out of curiosity, what is the highest level of education you have obtained?
 
There's a lot that needs to be fixed on top of abolishing minimum wage, but at least it would be one step towards the return of smaller businesses and competition. You'd have better options for employment, and it would improve standards of the large corporations as well and their dealings with employees.

How would that be a step toward the return of small businesses, if larger ones like corporations can just pay higher wages temporarily to price the smaller ones out of existence like they do now with lower merchandise prices?

You're looking at this the wrong way, unfortunately, seeing it only through the lens of preexisting conditions.

Then spell out some details for me, that's what I was asking for. How do you see it working? "Day in the life." Or rather, "Day in the job hunt life."

If we're only talking minimum wage in America, all other things being the same, things would be slightly better than they are.

Why? How? Again, that's what I was asking: not that it would better, but why.
 
So why doesn't target pay more than minimum wage? There's nothing about the minimum wage that says your pay scale must start there, yet they insist upon doing so. If there were no minimum wage, why would they pay more than they currently do? Why would they even continue paying what they do now? Target is extremely focused on minimizing payroll costs. Walmart would surely lead the charge. That's almost 2 million people who are already under the poverty line now making even less. So wages go down and now people have less spending money. Then we tell them to eschew all responsibilities and go back to school and make something of themselves.

We all want taxes to go down. We don't want the top 1% paying 37% of the taxes. But encouraging companies to pay their employees less isn't the solution. As long as 50 million people(33% of our US workforce) make less than $15,000 per year(most Target workers fall into this category) there can be no tax parity. Those 50 million people still have bills and rent and need gas and food. Until we as a corporation find a way to move money from the 1% to the 33%, we are forcing the government to do it for us.
 
I hate getting into this, because these kinds of comparisons annoy the hell out of me. I mean, Germany is the leading economy of Europe and has sort of single handedly bailed out a number of countries. They have no minimum wage. Ergo, according to this logic, no minimum wage is a good thing? Or, taking another route, if a 16 dollar minimum wage works so sportingly in Australia, would you suppose it works just as well in a third world nation? I would hope that you immediately see it wouldn't.

You were being a bit sneaky on the whole Germany doesn't have a minimum wage.
They have one for certain occupations and more importantly a law concerning 'immoral' wages.
They are also heavily unionized as compared to the US so most companies have to sign contracts.
I have a friend from Germany who worked in a bank and they went on S.
Can you imagine tellers in a bank going on S here?
Many of the countries in Europe that don't have minimum wage rely on collective bargaining and I'm OK with that, as long as all the workers are organized.
You down with that?

There are third world countries with minimum wage laws for that matter.
Not many but but a few.
Would a sixteen dollar an hour minimum wage work there, no of course not.
By creating the standard it keeps multi-national corporations (like Walmart and Spot) from exploiting their workers.
(For that matter some of them have started to have child labor laws)
 
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Geez, as if CA wasn't already fucked as it is. In the state's rural districts unemployment is almost uniformly in the double digits and that's where you have the majority of the unskilled labor. California is such a mess.
I like how it says "He added that, "Nothing will make small businesses happier. This will stimulate the economy, as well as helping people's lives."
Minimum wage crushes small business and increases unemployment.

Please provide a historical example in which a raise in the minimum wage resulted in an increase in unemployment.
 
So why doesn't target pay more than minimum wage?

In my state, the starting pay is $0.50/hour higher than minimum wage.
 
Pure and simple, if the minimum wage goes up, the choice is A) prices go up and/or B businesses work with fewer employees and sacrifice quality of product/service. Oh wait, there is a C: benefits are cut, hours are cut, increased productivity is mandatory to cover the increased cost of having employees.

You may believe that businesses will just swallow the increased cost (remember that not only will the hourly pay rise, the taxes paid by the business rise also) but that can't happen. Businesses cannot continue operations if it costs more to operate than $$ generated.

Australia: Yes, the minimum wage is about $15 US in Australia, but teenagers/unskilled workers aren't eligible to receive that "minimum." 16 year olds at McDonalds AU make $8 US per hour. And as expected, the cost of living is higher in Australia than in much of the US. Take a look at the housing costs in Sydney. Or public transportation. Or grocery prices.

I'm not saying that it's not sad that so many Americans work for poverty wages or less. But raising the minimum wage won't have the consequences you're looking for.
 
Is the cost of living higher because of the minimum wage or is the minimum wage higher because of the cost of living?
My understanding from conversation with gamers from downunder is that the wage is tied to the cost of living.
Also the lower wage is only for people under a certain age living at home, dependents.
If you are trying to survive on your own then you are paid the minimum wage.
Considering that these days a good portion of the people in the the US who work for the minimum wage are not kids but adults trying to pay bills this makes sense to me.
 
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You should know that those big corporations welcome a high minimum wage (although not so high that they can't operate). Even the CEO of Wal-Mart has called for higher minimum wage in the past. I wonder why...

But walmart doesn't need a higher minimum wage to price out small businesses. If they choose to pay higher than a small business does, employees will choose to work there. Minimum wage has no effect on whether a company chooses to pay more than that. Simply paying more becomes a de facto minimum wage increase because other businesses have to stay competitive.

Low costs are preferable to everyone and they're good for the economy.

Low salaries are not good for the economy. Our economy requires money to keep changing hands. As it flows, it supports each part it touches. Consumers in poverty have low spending power and cannot support what the business they are needed to support. This is why a strong middle class is important to a successful economy. The middle class has the spending power.
 
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