Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 24, 2016

Smartest business move Mike ever made?Marrying Kim.

Amazing what treating workers well will do.

“With happy workers profits riseThe bottom line tells no liesWith that in mind, I guess we’ll seeHow we’ll do, when we pay fiftyDon’t think small, forge ahead

How rich we’ll get paying a hundred.Still too small, that won’t standBabe, we’ll pay ‘em a thousand!Soon our wealth will overflowWe’ll all grow rich with the seeds we sow."

You make your labor more valuable by valuing it more.

Costco….a great model. I just visited ours and again all the staff was actually….cheery and it is not Christmas.

Well, if it works on Doonesbury, then I’m a believer.

On a conceptual level, it just seems to me that if you don’t pay your employees enough to shop at your place of business or buy your product, then you are just asking for trouble.

The reductio ad absurdem argument against raising the minimum wage isn’t very effective because most people in favor of it already understand the concept of diminishing returns. A quarter here, a dime there will increase worker happiness and retention without significantly impacting the bottom line.

Raising the minimum wage is certainly not a problem as long as you are willing to accept the increased product/service costs that allow it. The latter always escape liberals who believe in the fairy tale called, ‘free’.

People support all sorts of things that aren’t workable in the real world. Just because people support something doesn’t mean it should be done. But why bother with facts when you are trying to score political points.

If companies that pay higher salaries do better than companies that pay lower salaries, then low-salary companies will either pay higher wages or go out of business.

Having the government FORCE everyone to pay higher wages is not the way to do it. Minimum wage laws are shaped by politics, not real-world cost/benefit outcomes. And they’re a one-size-fits-all approach that just doesn’t fit every situation.

Well, Walmart just announced that they’re closing a few hundred stores, and CostCo is opening more.

Can almost promise you that they wouldn’t up the wage to $15/hr this yr. Seattle, or at least the areas that have voted to increase minimum wage, have included a provision to phase it in OVER 4 YRS! They have 2 more yrs. to comply.

Good looking out for him, Kim.

Poetry should scan. That means not twisting words into an unnatural pronunciation to force a weak rhyme.

Funny how slippery the slope looks to cheap labor conservatives.

Maybe apocryphal, but the Henry Ford quote always comes to mind: “I pay them so much so that they can afford to buy my cars.”

Dream on, Doonie! Don’t open your eyes. You won’t see any employees because you can’t afford to pay wages they don’t rate.

Some things are not – or should not – be subject to majority rule. It doesn’t matter if most people oppose gay marriage, for example: gays harm no one else by marrying each other, and therefore should be allowed to do so.

If you offer me a job at a $8/hr and I accept it, it’s not up to someone else to prevent us from making that mutually-beneficial deal. And it’s arrogant for someone to block the deal because, in his opinion, $8/hr isn’t “good enough” for me. I have the right to make my own decisions about how to improve my life, and someone else doesn’t have the right to impose his standards on me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_five-dollar_workday

Henry Ford beat ’em to it……..

Didn’t Henry Ford figure that out a century ago?

so, paying workers a decent living wage makes them more productive, contributes to the bottom line, and retains them. but, that is counter what many business people say in the media. that companies have to find the cheapest and possibly free labor, that profits and beating wall street estimates are the only metric of success, and accumulation of wealth for the ceo is more paramount than the front line workers.

Labor is the source of all capital.

Every increase in the minimum wage (starting with it’s implementation) has been greeted with the ownership class swearing it will nosedive the economy.Number of times an increase has had a deleterious effect on the economy? Excatly 0.

The trickle-down fools like to say “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Well, they’re right; they’re just not smart enough to realize that the tide rises from the bottom up!

Kim’s living in a dreamland, inhabited by fairies.

Why are a lot of the people in the strip occasionally drawn with their lip sticking out? Very unattractive look for them.

What they’re being nice to the serfs and slaves. Treason! Do that again and will string you up. Now go back and whip all the dignity you can out of your peons.

Henry Ford understood it. That’s what led to traffic jams.

So if raising their wages to $15/hour was good, raising it to $1,500/hour should be 100 times as good! No negative effects at all! Right? Honestly, why not just raise the minimum wage to $500/hour? Then everyone would be a millionaire after just one full-time year, unemployment would be zero because the economy would be smokin’ hot from everyone buying everything, and the gov’t would have more money than it knew what to do with from raising everyone’s tax rate to 90%.

Ain’t fairy-tale economics great?

Wow. This is the BEST discussion I’ve seen here in years! Seriously; it’s like the opposite of the Iran-Iraq war (where I was hoping both sides could lose). I’m hoping both sides can win, somehow..On the one hand, if I want to break into some job where I know I can’t possibly deliver $15/hour of benefit to my employer (at first), why should I NOT be allowed to offer to work for $5/hour for the first month? After that, either I’ll have enough experience to be worth more, or maybe it will become apparent that I was always worth more, or maybe I’ll learn I should be doing something else. Also, all my friends who own small businesses tell me how stressful it is figuring out who to fire, every time the minimum wage goes up. (Yes, I know, world’s smallest violin for my friends, and it’s way more stressful for the workers being fired. The people fired are my point: wage rise = firing people, too often. That’s why Obama is afraid to raise the minimum wage.).On the other hand, many businesses do find (as Kim did) that paying people better is better for everyone. But many business owners are dumb as a brick (a few of my friends included). So maybe there’s an argument for the government forcing them to do the right thing. Especially since the government has more interest in the workers being treated fairly than in the smarter companies having a competitive advantage. (e.g.: if the feds forced Walmart to pay like Costco, it would hurt Costco’s competitive edge.).P.S. I can already hear the complaints, “how can someone that dumb own a successful business?” We have a great saying in the South: “even a blind hog finds a truffle now and then.” If you have hundreds of people starting businesses, some will simply get lucky. Some of the lucky ones will be smart; some, not so much

One for Republican and Tea Party followers.

“That contradicts John Stossle”: You do realize that Mike Doonesbury’s company is fictional and therefore provides evidence of nothing, right?

“Pay your workers… so that they can afford what they make.”: So everyone who works at a yacht construction company should be able to afford a yacht?

Nobody understands the economy well enough to predict anything. You can express all the beliefs you want but you don’t know what will happen, nobody does.

There are different kinds of poems… various rhyme schemes, rhythms, forms, formats… and there’s even some that haven’t been discovered yet. That’s because some poet did something different from the previous. That’s why we got rid of the poem police. It’s supposed to be fun, not Nazi lock-step marching of words. That’s why someone can make a playful poem that stretches the concept of rhyme and create something that does make a statement, whether or not you agree with it. The twisted rhyming might fit with a sarcastic sort of statement, oui?.Which leads us to open source, copyleft, volunteering, cooperation, service, mentoring, “It takes a village”. The civilized part of the world (ie. the kindly part) is headed that way. Eventually the whole world will be there. We all have schools, hospitals, cell phones, many improvements in life. Indoor plumbing even, in spite of the fact that human nature doesn’t change. Why not better economic systems too?.For instance, you want a better wage, OK, but for me to pay it, I’ll need you to do a better job. You’ll need better skills. So go go school and I will help with tuition. It will help my company. That idea was absolutely unheard of 100 years ago. Who knows what other nifty ideas might be hiding around the corner?

So, you all are satisfied for Wail Mart to pay as little as possible and also teach their employees how to apply for federal benefits that you pay for? While the Walton family is worth somewhere around $60 billion ? Brilliant. “Rich people don’t create jobs; just the opposite.”

We know Kim’s strategy doesn’t work in general, because if it did, we wouldn’t have to force employers to pay minimum wage. The Mikes of the world would not be able to compete with the Kims. Mike would be able to get only the crappy employees who can’t get a job with Kim, and they would be so unproductive that Mike’s prices would be higher than Kim’s and Mike would lose all his customers and go out of business.

That employers survive year after year paying low wages tells us that it’s a good business strategy. Apparently, paying $15/hr to someone who would take $10 does not make that employee 50% more productive.

Paying your workers enough so that they can afford to purchase the Products they Make & Handle was pioneered in the USA by Henry ford who, Famously, Doubled the wages of all his Ford Motors employees one day..Not only did Ford’s sales go up, he used the bigger paychecks to poach all the Best Employees from his competitors..But, Corporate America prefers to Ignore the all lessons from History after 1855..The Rich B@stards want their Slaves Back.

Productivity is up? I seriously doubt it. Only written with a misguided view on human nature.

Every time the US economy is starting signifificant inflation(one that can not be denied), certain places vote to raise the minimum wage gradually. It is only a feel good move, because by the time the raise actually comes, the rest of the state already is there. Very few places have a higher minimum wage than their state(San Fransico comes to mind).The buying power of minimum wage has gotten less and less over the years. The influx of foreign workers(legal and otherwise has kept it down. In ‘74. my wife and I bothe had minimum wage jobs. We managed to keep 2 old cars, rent a small apartment, eat out and go to a move every week and buy some clothes. It wasn’t easy, but much better than it is today.

Exception to the rule so far.

Now, some might think I am not only a wordy bad poet but a heartless bashteurd as well, same as they who oppose raising or even having a minimum wage..They do this because they believe governmental control of our lives is inherently good..I have read that the magic number of $15/hr is below what it was a few years back, due to government induced inflation.Which is to say government has reduced starting pay by establishing it at a given number..Further, they admit some are not hired because potential employers don’t consider them worth the current minimum, but they consider them unimportant because they are just a few million.(And they call me heartless ? ).They admit jobs go elsewhere to countries where the products can be made more cheaply, but deny they had a hand in it. This will speed up automation and permanently remove remove many jobs from those available to unskilled laborers. More will not gain the proven skills needed to progress to above-minimum jobs..Counterproductive..At the same time, they buy those very products while feeling moral superiority, not a twinge of guilt.

.By the way, the proposed higher minimum would raise my current pay more than $3/hr.

You guys have missed one MAJOR problem with increasing minimum wages for minimal skill jobs: motivation.

People are more driven to achieve when the rewards are greater, such as better pay. By trying to increase the minimum pay grade, you wind up leveling that field.

People are less motivated to put in effort when the reward doesn’t seem worth it.

Think of it this way: you can flip burgers for $31k a year, or do four years of college, get a bachelors so you can become a manager… for $31k, which is the starting (read: minimum) salary for a manager.

The trickle-down theory works off of your motive. Take that motive away, and you wind up with the McJob generation.