Tom Toles for December 09, 2013

The poor in America have cell phones, microwaves, cable-tv, cars, big screen TV’s, and I’ve left much more out. So, what happens if minimum wage goes up? All other wages that wasn’t minimum wages goes up as well. Services and merchandise prices increase. Nothing changes except things get more expensive and the people “suffering” at minimum wages now still “suffer” at minimum wages later. People with skilled labor advantages and education will not want to be on the same wage playing field with those that are unskilled. Plain and simple. Dems just continue to hurt more those they “intended” to help.

There was no minimum wage when the Constitution was written and things were fine.

He forgot the most important item….An arrow pointing at the guy’s head captioned “Thick as a brick”.Only the lazy and stupid end up at minimum wage by 30. You’d have to have literally near zero skills or knowledge or be very lethargic not to have moved well beyond minimum wage otherwise.

Minimum wage USED to be a living wage. You wouldn’t get rich, and you wouldn’t live in luxury, but you could live.

I am always against the government fiddling in the market place the the minimum wage laws are the worst sort of tripe.

As a high school kid I worked in a grocery store for minimum wage and I was probably ripping off the store. Not because I didn’t want to do a good job but I started with very little understanding of the business and had to be trained. I content that if the wage had been a little higher it wouldn’t have been cost effective to take me on and teach me the ropes.

That’s the problem with raising the minimum wage. You price people out of the market place. You can bluster and blow about how they deserve a living wage or it’s the right thing to do but if you make people cost more then they are worth then comanies won’t hire them.

If you don’t believe me – Let me offer you a few examples of how businesses have adapted to avoid workers who are too expensive.

How many of you shop at a grocery store that makes you bag your own groceries? That’s what I used to do in high school. That and stock shelves. At $4 an hour my employer could afford it but at $8, $10, $15 as some contend nobody can afford it.

How many of you bus your own table at a fast food restaurant? I had friends who used to do that for minimum wage.

I can continue down the list but businesses adapt: They come up with novel solutions, they replace people with machines, etc.

And why is this all about the employers? High school kids have an excuse. They are just learning how to be in the business world. But an adult making minimum wage for any length of time is not showing their employer that they are adding value to the equation. Why aren’t they getting job training, education, etc. To improve their value to the employer?

@Adrian Snare – We HAVE an Excellent Education system. But we have too many kids showing up at school: Without their homework done, without a good attitude towards education, and without an appreciation of what they are receiving.

I come from a family full of educators and kids from good families come out of school well prepared for college and the workforce. Kids from bad families can be going to the best school in the area and they will still come out barely able to read and with know real analytical skills (Minimum wage wannabees).

The lazy and the stupid always want to blame the education system but they never dig to see what is keeping the education system from achieving.

I went to a mediocre small town school but because I worked hard and understood the value of education I was able to go on for further education and fulfill my career aspirations. Classmates of mine were able to do the same thing. I had other classmates who didn’t value education and they languish in deadend jobs and complain about how they never got a fair chance.

Personal responsibility has to be taught and adhered to from the beginning of the educational process.

“Working Poor” should be an oxymoron.

My first job at 16 was part time at W T Grant company (sort of a KMart of that era). I worked for minimum wage in the hardware and garden department. Made keys, handled chemicals, did all sorts of stuff like that. I could never have gotten that job today. OSHA and the EPA have made it impossible to hire a teen where anything “hazardous” is involved. .It was a good first job and I learned a lot about work along with some good skills that I could build on for future jobs. Today the government has made doing what I did growing up impossible.Small wonder our workforce is declining in ability and being paid crap wages. It is forced be older (18+ years old) just to enter the workforce and do anything more than hand a bag of fat, starch, and cholesterol to a customer and say “Thank you!” for anyone under 18.So, you get older people having to start working later in life, having less skills, and ending up with lower wages.

Only 28% of minimum-wage workers have less than a high school education. Only 24% of minimum-wage workers are teenagers. Almost half of all minimum-wage workers are adult women. I had a paper route as a kid. Take the amount of money I earned per month divided by the number of hours I spent earning it, and I made less than the minimum wage at the time, which was $1.60 an hour. That’s okay, I was a kid, and was only making pocket money. Not earning a living. There is a place for such jobs. The problem is, what happens when people are so desperate that they are willing to work for a pittance rather than go without? Should adults be taking jobs designed for teen-age part-timers? The problem is an economy that can offer nothing better to millions of adults, who have skills, ambition, talents, and still can’t find anything better! Should we say, “Sure, you’re being exploited, but that’s just too bad?” Here’s a little game employers play: You have a job that the average high school graduate could not perform adequately without further training and experience. However, if you advertise the job that way, you will be expected to pay wages commensurate with the higher levels of skill, education, etc., needed. So you advertise, no experience necessary, high school education (only) required. You know perfectly well that you will get applicants in a depressed job market with much higher qualifications: and you can get those skilled workers at low wages without any appearance of exploitation, “sure you have a college degree, but this job doesn’t require one.” Years ago I applied for a more-or-less clerical job at a college, a job for which I more than met the listed requirements: I had a degree, the position only “required” a HS diploma. I did not beef because I did not get the job. However, I was astonished that I did not get an interview! I found out that they only interviewed the applicants who had some post-graduate work. But the rules at the college work that require a high level of skill be paid accordingly. By officially describing the job as they did, the office in question could get the high level of skill without paying for it. I don’t say I have any easy solution. A booming economy and a mobile workforce are the best solutions, perhaps, but hardly easy to obtain. And in spite of what simpletons may think and politicians claim, eliminating protections (like the minimum wage and unemployment compensation), and increasing the burdens, for the people at the bottom of pyramid while lifting burdens off the people at the top, does not result in a thriving economy. The most thriving economies are those in which people are most equal, and no man’s labor is counted as infinitely more valuable than another man’s labor. Small towns can be like that: the doctor’s house is not a hundred times better than the workingman’s house. Companies in which the boss and his workers may be shopping in the same stores, fishing in the same lake, attending the same church. Extremes of equality and inequality are BOTH pernicious. The so-called market cannot be ignored, but neither does it have to rule absolutely. It is, after all, and artificial thing, with made-up rules. ( For example: if I say, “Give me your money, and I will give you this thing. But it is your choice!” We call that a free market and a good thing. But if I say, “Give me you money and I will give you peace. If not, something bad will happen to you. But it is your choice!” We call that extortion. The distinction between the two is in the rules we make for the operation of a market. Without regulations, there is no difference between the two transactions. ) Markets are always regulated, always have been from the days of Rome and Greece to the present. The purely free market is an abstraction, it has never been a reality. Workers are not always able to quit and move on to something else if the wages are too low or the conditions too harsh or the employer promises one thing and delivers another. In many cases they are, but in many they are not. “Yes, we’ll pay you for forty hours, but you’ll work sixty. Don’t like it? There’s the door!” For a variety of reasons, the door may not be any more viable an option than retiring to a luxury resort. The social safety net is just that. No one learns to work the high wire without a safety net. One day he may be so good he doesn’t need it. But few people are even going to attempt to learn the act if they can’t have a net while they learn. The social safety net is the best way to ensure that risks can be taken without making all of them life-or-death hazards.

Possibly because all the laws, regulation and overhead makes it almost impossible to start your own business and become the CEO.

We have a nice crony fascist system that only allows the those that buy power to actually start businesses and thus get paid whatever the hell they want.

We could possibly start there, but no you’d rather play their game (while they laugh at you) and fight about what pittance your sold freedoms get you.

But, corporations could do evil you say. Well no corporation can have a monopoly without the state enforcing the monopoly. And you think power hungry elected officials are no less potentially evil?

Based upon previous postings, idiocy.

@Ethanial67 – Perhaps things are different in your community but I just perused a website with all sorts of Franchise opportunities for sale: Pizza, Electronics, Real Estate, Burgers, Tutoring, etc.

And that’s if you want a turnkey business. If you’re willing to believe in yourself you can start without it.

Or is it your argument that since running a company takes education and a knowledge of the local laws and regulations that it is impossible to do so?

something I don’t unerstand,and perhaps someone can

explain is this: why are things constantly becoming moreexpensive to buy, yet the ones who produce the stuff are notgetting pay increases somewhat equal to the rise in prices?I really would like to know the answer.

ok Skeptical, next time you need a plumber or a carpenter, or an IT man to fix something,offer him minimum wage and watch him flipyou the bird and walk off laughing

“But still no CONservative has ever been willing to answer my question, why is it such a bad thing to pay workers commensurate with their generation of wealth for the company? " Trusted Mechanic..It isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But, if an individual worker generates a pittance of that wealth should they not be paid a pittance?The other variant of that is that the worker is in a job that requires little training and is something virtually anyone can do in a market where there is no shortage of labor. Why pay more for a worker when you can easily staff your workforce at low wages due to worker competition and no need for skills?.In both cases the employer has no incentive to pay the worker more and doing so is a bad thing in terms of not just immediate wealth generation but in terms of future generation. The low wage leaves slop and room to move up useful and better workers through job changes and raises. That gives the employer more incentives to motivate workers to do a good job.

life is brutish and short . Nobody owes you a living! However the minimum wage hasn’t kept up with inflation (LIKE EVERY THING ELSE). it should be 12-15$. To right this wrong immediately would turn the economy on it’s head. SOLUTION: slowly raise minimum wage up until it is finally 12 or 15$ in a couple of years——-I am such a genius!

I have never understood why giving the CEO a multimillion dollar pay raise supposedly never raises prices. Yet taking that same pay raise and giving it to the people making less than a living wage will doom the economy. Can someone explain this?

_You want FULL employment at the most internationally competitive rates? Reinstitute slavery! _Good one, you’re giving Michael wme a run for the money there.

for those who think min wage should be higher , start a company and pay them more// you are right night gaunt49 the USA leads only in $$$ student

@Night-Guant49: I would counter that if you look to Japan and Finland (Countries in which I’ve had a few beers) you will find two big issues that separate them from our beloved USA.1) They only test the brightest and the best and DO NOT try to teach Calculus and Chemistry to kids that have no interest in it.2) They, as a society, value their educators and the education process over tangible wealth like rotating rims and Air Jordans. I volunteer in some of the local inner city schools teaching business, ethics, and science. I see a lot of kids that are just holding down a seat.

Yes there are bad teachers out there and we should get them out of the schools. But there are bad students out there as well and we should put them in a cage. Not to protect the teachers but to protect the serious students from their disruptive thuggish activities.

@Hawthorn – So what you are saying is that you can’t amass the capital it takes to start your own business therefor it’s impossible for anybody to do it.

I didn’t say it was easy. But that is part of the overall discussion we are having on this site. The people who are staying at minimum wage for long term either can’t or won’t invest enough in themselves to become worth more then minimum wage. That, in my opinion, demonstrates a lack of discipline.

Give up a bad habit, sell your old comic books, take on a second job, live in a smaller house or apartment. There are many ways to economize and save up the money to start your own business. Winners find solutions while losers find excuses.

TTM, I gave your question an answer. Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t make it not an answer.I stated it is not a bad thing. Then I qualified that answer with several examples because you also asked “…why.”.What bothers you about my answer?Is it the notion that if you create a pittance of wealth you should be paid a pittance?Is it that in a “buyers” market (ie., one with a surplus of labor) that the price of labor will be driven down?.It is your apparent position on this TTM that is indefensible. You apparently believe (at least I infer it from what you write) that everyone deserves a “living” or otherwise good rate of pay regardless of their productivity, regardless of market forces, regardless of the conditions it might put a business into.That to me smacks of the failure of Socialist systems and big oppressive government meddling in the market. After all, nothing short of that is going to force employers to do something that will potentially put them out of business like paying more for workers than they can afford.

Apparently, way too many people posting here are making minimum wage. Very defensive……lol.My comment was partially in jest and to provoke, but really a minimum wage is made for young people who have not had the time yet to learn a trade or receive an advanced education.I would say to you posters that can’t seem to increase your minimum wage salary: Get some skills!Ya, ya I know, you’re all brain surgeons and scientists that post here in between experiments, but really maybe instead of surfing the net all day, you could actually be improving your situation.Even if you work at McDonalds (Oscar, truist, doughboy etc.) you could work hard and become a manager and make 40k a year. Not great, but enough to get by in most towns.Don’t be like that dumb lady LaQuita on the news who’s mad that she can’t support her 4 kids on $8 an hour.YOUR NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE 4 kids with that limited earning potential!

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt first created the minimum wage in 1938, it was 25 cents. Adjusted for inflation, that would be worth $4.07 today. – See more at: http://economy.money.cnn.com/2013/02/14/minimum-wage-history/#sthash.LztJaqkz.dpuf

Increasing the Minimum Wage is another Democrat plan to transfer wealth- If people in the low income brackets make more money, they will be taxed. Then Democrats will then have more money as they ‘Spend Other People’s Money’.

Interesting response.I think you’ve said in the past that you own a shop with employees. Do YOU pay your employees minimum wage?I’m betting you pay them better. Is that because you’re a Mother Teresa type person that lives in poverty so that others can live better? I’m betting no on that one too.So why do you and hundreds of thousands of other employers pay MORE than what the government requires them to pay?I do not personally employ anyone, but I do know many people that do. They know that a happy employee is a productive employee. Also, in order to keep your best and proven employees, they must be paid fairly or they will leave.These are practical reasons why most employers pay above minimum wage.Believe it or not, many small-business owners actually like their employees and their families and want them to be comfortable as well.Not sure why you have such a negative outlook on people Mechanic, unless those assumptions I made about you are wrong?

With ConserveGov, idiocy is always a safe bet.