"This is a crime against humanity," Rep. Geraldine Flaharty, D-Wichita, said about the Kansas House voting Wednesday not to raise the state’s minimum wage. The wage floor — which applies to about 19,000 Kansans — is $2.65 per hour, the lowest in the nation.
Polls show that 86 percent of Americans want an increase in the federal minimum wage, which Congress will likely raise from $5.15 to $7.25. Maybe Kansas House members were too busy cutting corporate taxes this session to pay much attention to what the public wants. Or maybe they agree with Rep. Benjamin Hodge, R-Overland Park, that the state should avoid "European-style socialist bills."
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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65 Comments
My idea of the moment:1. 2 term limit for House of Reps and 3 terms for Senate.2. Law to mandate Congressional pay not exceed the higher of minimum wage or median US income3. Congressional pay can only be changed with an equitable change in minimum wage.4. Small business tax breaks to help alleviate any burden from increased minimum wage.5. Tax increases for public and large private companies to offset small business tax cuts.
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/02/kansas_gop_5300_per_year_is_en.php
The Kansas state minimum wage (which affects only those outside federal standards) is $2.65. The recent push to boost the federal minimum wage inspired some legislators to try boosting the state minimum, but 62 Kansas House Republicans rejected the increase.
Rep. Benjamin Hodge reportedly rejected the bill because he wants to avoid “European-style socialist bills.”
Because here in America, if you can’t live on $106 per week, you just aren’t trying.
Just another reason to be ashamed of Kansas and hate Republicans…
Like we needed any more of those.
I made $2.65 an hour as a waiter back in the 80’s at Chi-Chi on West Street. Was it less than that? I can’t remember.
But tips on those nights where people waited two hours for a table, incredible cash to me. I took home $80 or more a night, all week. Busy weekends, it was near $200, after I tipped the bus staff.
I made more as a waiter than moving into the kitchen becoming the number 1 line cook.
Waiters should make minimum, $5.15 plus tips seems reasonable.
If its $7.25, waiters get no tips? That would be a rip off!
If its $7.25 plus tips, that’s a good paying job at a busy restaurant. Some people work 10 to 14 hours a day in restaurants.
Until we get very very serious and make everyone we know aware that we need to UNelelect these idiots in the Kansas statehouse we will get this same kind of UNrepresentation. Go out and spread the word far and wide. Talk it up to even those who don’t want to pay attention.
Sounds like a good plan there Brian…
Here we go with another non-issue.
Great to watch Kansas Republicans once again stepping on their collective dick.
Socialism?!?
What century rock did Hodge ooze out from under?
The sheer stupidity of Republicans never ceases to amaze me.
How do we go about lowering the minimum wage? Better yet, just eliminating it. Where’s that candidate?
How do we go about lowering the SOB? Better yet, just eliminating him. Where’s that candidate?
Please restate that attempt at humor.
Okay – how do we get you to go away, SOB?
Free country dude. Free blog. Please don’t trample my civil rights and free speech!
Wassup, SOBalls?
Tracie thinks everyone that’s not in the lefty-luney club is the same person….what a loon.
Mrage,
I’ll bet you were one of my waiters. Chi-Chi’s was my favorite place to eat. And, yes, we always left a good tip.
“How do we go about lowering the SOB?”
Don’t think that’s possible. He’s about as low as a human can get.
(NOT tongue-in-cheek nor sarcasm. Just pure 100% opinion.)
TRACE-ALUNA.
RD,
I was a guy host at the front seating people when Chi-Chi’s opened. I applied to work in the kitchen, the manager lady wouldn’t let me. I was too cute she said! Another guy, the rest were pretty girls.
Women flirted with me all the time because they were drinking huge two for one margarita’s waiting for a table. I would say FOLLOW ME and got comments on my butt. Drunk chicks said anything they thought was funny.
Crazy people waited many hours for a table! It amazed me. I’d say come back in two hours and they would. Some just sat around bored in the lobby or bar. On decent nights, they waited in the parking lot.
3 hour waits on weekends.
I was a waiter for awhile, then went into the kitchen. Lasted three years at Chi-Chi’s from the day it opened.
Here is my worst waiter story…I waited on two girls, they were flirting. A table next to them was a family of five.
Both tables liked the food and service, but when I went to place a tray with the ticket and mints on the family table, one of those girls pulled on my apron playfully, because I too close to them. The mints spilled into the family’s grandma’s hair.
The girls apologized but the family didn’t leave me a tip. It wasn’t my fault. The mints in grandma’s hair made other staff laugh as well.
I never dropped a plate of food, always amazed myself. Others drop trays of food.
In the kitchen, I threw a spoon at a waiter for complaining how the food was prepared and CEO of Chi-Chi’s was standing right next to me. The waiter’s ticket had to explain exactly what to make. I was justified said the CEO. Then he asked if I need a vacation. I got a three week paid vacation :-)
Maybe I cooked your food too and you kept coming back.
Mrage, that’s good, but in most towns or restaurants we’re not busy enough to bring home that much in tips. I sure never did when I waitressed. And depending on your shift if you worked the rush you got good tips and maybe made 15 an hour, if you worked the WHOLE 8 hour shift, you made considerably less because the down times took away from what you earned during the busy times.
It is just disgraceful that the house couldn’t figure it out that we need to be in line with other states.
Can’t say as I’ve ever eaten at Chi Chi’s. If you have to wait 2-3 hours for a table, I probably never will eat there. I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I have worked in bars. Nobody tips the bouncer.
you know Chi Chi’s means tits in spanish
Depending on how busy a restaurant is, they can go without tips. Just pay everybody $7.25 an hour, if its possible.
A business sticking to the federal minimum wage is wrong for manypeople. Teenagers burn through cash and stuff they pay for is more expensive today.
Waiters making $5.15 plus tips is pretty good. That should be the floor for pay in Kansas.
I’m remembering not making $2.65 an hour. I think it was $2.15 back in the early 80’s.
I got paid for the hours every two weeks. Even during the slow hours at Chi-Chi’s most days I left with $80 in tips after paying the bus staff.
Red Lobster wasn’t constructed yet on West Street. There wasn’t much competition and people liked the “club card” process back when alcohol sales were like that.
I never had to wait two hours in a restaurant in modern times, I couldn’t imagine it.
Dingus,
Chi-Chi’s owners wife had a pair big one’s. I met her. She was motherly person and very nice. It was partnership of two guys.
They had a EAT THE WORM t-shirt they gave out for people eating the worm at the bottom of tequila bottle.
That shirt caused many misunderstandings and people wanted it!
I’ve never had chimichangas that are as good as Chi Chi’s were. Never. And it was there that I discovered the drink, Chi Chi, which is a pina colada made with vodka. I still get a strange look when I ask for one somewhere else, and then I have to explain.
Most of the time I was with my husband and often with another couple or two. After the Crown Room on Meridian closed down, Chi Chi’s was where we always went. But I did go with a friend once or twice, and I took my 7th grade Girl Scout troop there (6 of them) as a year-end celebration. They, of course, were limited to Chi Chis without the alcohol. ;)
Those were the good old days. Or close, anyway.
Another reason to get out of this state. Welcome to the hateland.
Dingus: Suppose that Hooters was the downfall of Chi-Chi’s? :)
I’m still trying to figure out that “European Socialist Laws” quote. I’ll have whatever he’s drinking…in fact, make it a double!
Good try, rm. LOL
Actually, Chi Chi’s downfall was several cases of Hepatitis A that killed several people, followed by the bankruptcy that caused. Outback bought them out after that.
(Google works wonders.)
Green onions killed the Chi-Chi’s corp. But I can’t remember what they were put on or in.
Shouldn’t the farm field where the onions came from cause the contamination problem.
No matter, restaurants today would beg for 2 and 3 hour waits for food, staying that busy.
Waiters and waitresses should make more $2.65 a hour. People relate tipping like its a mandatory cost.
There was a markup on the ticket, but tip amount paid was a choice.
Tip haters shouldn’t complain about this.
It’s a fight for financial sanity because thousands of people work in those jobs.
That $2.65 hourly wage is forced harder than the federal minimum wage. I’m sure no waiter or waitress in this state is making more but I maybe wrong.
It depends how restaurants pay their workers. More hourly pay less tip amounts or no tips at all.
Who is the lobby keeping this problem going? Until the national minimum wage increases, the $2.65 won’t increase.
$5.15 plus tips seems the right price in today’s economics. A lot of restaurants are maybe not giving many hours to work. Part timing everybody.
Here’s something I’ve never heard come from a politician’s lips: Why not set the minimum wage to a current value indexed to it’s highest earning percentage in history occurring sometime in the late 60’s to mid 70’s and then let if float annually with the cost of living.
Then we’d never talk about this crap again! All the pro-small business owner lobbyist would bitch and moan about how it’d drive everybody out of business and cut into profits and all that crap, and how they’d have to pass the cost of it onto the consumer and drive up prices and blah skippy blah, but the side that no-one ever talks about is that folk making minimum wage are apt to spend their money not sit on it and grow their little freaking empire.
The benefit of that cash streaming back into the economy, not to mention the needs it’d meet for th e working poor in this country, would make it a winning strategy.
It must just be naive of me to even think it cause it’s one of probably a hundred political ideas that I never even hear anybody talking about that makes way too much sense.
Oh and for you tip folk…
It’s easy, keep everything the same as now, but if your tips don’t come in, you get gap of the difference between that low figure and the minimum wage.
By the way, very entertaining stories about waiting and waitressing. In Chicago at top flight restaurants, waiters pull nice 5 figure salaries with tips.
I’m a jazz singer in town and at one of my recent gigs I got a chance to meet and sing (Georgia) for the hitting coach of the Chicago White Sox and his wife (who of course hail from …).
Later that night I met an ex COO of one of ebay’s divisions who wanted to fly me into Arizona and sing at his daughter’s wedding. It’s one of those top flight places in town and I guarantee the wait staff made out better than I did.
I must agree, this is socialism. Just like it’s socialism for the Kansas congresspeople to get their hefty wages, health care benefits, paid travel expenses, free parking passes and a whole host of other evil socialistic benefits.
But will they throw that all away to make a point about the wrongs of socialism? Heck no, they’re Republicans. They love the poor so much they just want to have more of them.
Somebody please weigh in on my post! Why should not the minimum wage be set at a decent clip in today’s dollar’s relative to what it was at it’s strongest point and then rise and fall with inflation so that it’s purchasing power is never again diluted.
Is this not perfection? It would set us as a country light years ahead of what everybody else is doing, thinking about
ADem: I agree completely with the concept of increasing the minimum wage to a reasonable level and then indexing to inflation. It starts fair, remains fair, and removes it as a political issue.
Since it is such a simple idea, the politicians apparently want to retain minimum wage as an issue.
Outlander, it (as simple as it is) isn’t even on the political radar. I’ve literally never heard this proposed by any candidate for any office.
In a nutshell, price controls don’t work. Never have. Only the government could force you to pay more for something than it is actually worth.
ProudMan what about it doesn’t work?
It certainly isn’t complex and we as a matter of course see fluctuations in the value of our money invested routinely.
It’s one number indexed for inflation and adjusted once a year. No hoopla, no red tape, or requirements for government intervention, it simply would replace the existing minimum wage and then never be discussed in Federal Politics again (unless there’s a desire to bust the value of that indexed price down or raise it up (a true adjustment to the minimum wage since it’s purchasing power would be in step with inflation).
Also Proudman,
I have a salaried day job and I get cost of living adjustments annually in addition to raises based upon performance goals.
I don’t think this is uncommon.
The truth of the matter is only on the “lowest rungs” of the ladder way down the food chain are people treated with such disregard and disrespect.
Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” versus “In a nutshell, price controls never work” would be a lot more welcome response from our republican politicians who have controlled congress these past 10 years or so.
All the while they’ve voted for raises and better benefits for themselves while flatly refusing to do that for the working poor.
I could see them trotting out the old “In a nutshell, price controls never work” or “but what about (yet even more) tax breaks for small business” line while not at all living by that golden rule.
This is of course what they’ve done unabashedly for the better part of a decade.
Your are advocating price controls, in this case the price of labor. Exactly how do you think the concept of ‘no requirements for government intervention’ works when the intervention is automatic or continuous? The minimum wage doesn’t work because you cannot force people to pay more for something than it’s value.
Your desire to implement the so-called Golden Rule, by force. Apply it to yourself. Do you wish others to force you to do as they think is right?
Proud?
You’re an employer….aren’t you?
That’s my guess anyway.
I can tell you confidently that given your posts here? Your employeees hate you…..and all that that entails.
When a man shows up to sell his time to another man, he is entitled to some minimum form of compensation. Failing that we have feudalism and slavery.
So we’ve gone from “I’m more capitalistic than you” to “Your employees hate you”.
I pay market rates for the labor I employ. Key thing is market rates. The people I employ have value to my business. If they didn’t I would not hire them. All I avocate is letting the market decide what a service is worth. Wage controls do not work.
Proud Man,
Walmart is the largest employer in this country. They pay “Market Rates” for their employees and that rate is a little above today’s depressed minimum wage(if minimum wage held the purchasing value now that it had in today’s dollars that it did at it’s greatest time in history, it would be $12 something right now according to Thom Hartmann’s books Screwed, the Undeclared War on the Milddle Class).
They make Billions not just in revenue, but in profit because they can get everything on the cheap (labor from here and everywhere, goods from China and what have you…). The impact of their poverty level Market Wages on the communities where they establish their stores is well documented.
Walmart is the El Nino of Business, actually influencing (more aptly lowering the bar on) what those esteemed “Market Rates” are. It’s because of them that employers (like yourself) are emboldened to pay their employees next to nothing, to the point that they barely eke out a living working long hours and yet feel nothing but pride (mr Proud Man) that they provide (not gainful!!) employment shamelessly taking greater profits than ever before.
Its the 21’st century’s slavery and it’s all the rage along with employing illegals and children for less than minimum wage these things all collude to drive the oh so sacred “Market Rate” down.
Unions and the minimum wage are equilizers and protections against the employers desire to pay the least amount possible for labor. The ability of laborers to demand a wage greater than poverty level and benefits are what the Middle Class in this country was built on! THE successful lobby to gut the unions in this country by relocating all of the manufacturing off shore has had a chilling effect on the “Market Rates” of labor in this country.
Employees are the guard against an employers desire to pay the lowest possible wage. That is how it works. Both parties have contradictory interests but reach an agreement to work together. Nobody forces wages upon someone. You always have the option to walk away and find work elsewhere or (heaven forbid) start your own business.
However, using a third party to force someone to pay more than they need to is wrong.
I know arguing with an employer about why labor should be paid a dignified wage might be akin to explaining a particular shade of blue to a man born blind at birth(not to mention lame as the arguments being presented are really just affirmations, catch phrases to live by like “price controls don’t work” and “the minimum wage doesn’t work” (even though it, broken though it may be, has existed in our society for a few generations now…), but it’s more than the two of us here so I will do it for the benefit of those who may not understand the nature of this argument.
It’s amazing to me that savvy can do folk like Proud Man don’t see the completely artificial nature of the oh-so-sacred “Market Rates of Labor” or really any and every other rate that can exist in a market.
Yes in an established market, rates fluctuate within a range and the ebb and flow of supply and demand determine those rates, but don’t you know that markets are completely artificial constructs?!
Sound governments establish the rules that govern sound markets. This is why even in wealthy third world countries like Nigeria, governmental interruptions and greed and desire for power hinder the creation of sound markets.
Those same forces of greed and corruption are unbalancing sound markets here in the U.S. The evidence of it is found in “the Gap”, not clothing stores but the amount of wealth being accumulated by the “Ruling Class” while those who are poor find it harder and harder to get ahead and more of those who are living comfortably but not rich are slipping into poverty, working longer hours to keep their status, and struggling to get ahead.
The logical conclusion of the continue “conservative” policies that have widened this gap and shifted massive wealth to the “Ruling Class” since Reagan is the same old surfdoms that have dominated the history of this world.
Everything possible should be done to shrink the gap, bringing balance to the Force and not just between have and have nots in this country by things like universal health care, excellent education, and a minimum wage that does more than leave people lingering in poverty, but between the developed countries and the third world.
It’s a tall order in a country where greed is looked at as a virtue and where the idea of accepting tens of millions in profits and raising the standard of living instead of hundred’s of millions and having it all to yourself seems absurd to those in that position. And really getting as much as you can for yourself is human nature. Heck we’re all republican’s at tax time.
Still what’s good for the middle and poor classes in this country is what’s good for the stability of America, not to mention we’re in the majority and on the move, so I think ProudMan a shift in the rules that have made the wealthy fabulously more wealthy than at any point in history are as inevitable as death and (new) taxes.
Maybe a more potent minimum wage will be a part of that solution (to replace the mortally wounded unions as the laborer’s best friend).
“Employees are the guard against an employers desire to pay the lowest possible wage”
This is true, but this whole equation is a matter of leverage. Right now with labor being mortally wounded as manufacturer after manufacturer shutters the doors to get cheap labor in China and other places abroad has given the employer much greater leverage to pay these new poverty wages in a now decidedly service oriented environment.
I love it how business owners all think that every employee should just quit their poverty level wage job and go out and start a business. That actually happens (not all the time, half the time or even some of the time but it does happen and more power to them), but that doesn’t address the problem. That just creates one more employer who gets to pay her or his employees poverty level wages.
The concern for the government is for the well being of it’s people and it’s stability, balancing the health of the market mechanism it brought into existence with the citizens who’re participating in those markets.
That balance has historically favored those who’re savvy enough to be on top like yourself. And it’s been to the ultimate wisdom of the leadership here to skew the game towards the laborer. This created a wonderful balance that gave rise to a vibrant middle class that thrived after the depression and continued right on thriving and growing ’til shortly after Reagan took office.
Since then as the power broker’s relentless lobbying of Federal government plying them with gifts and bon bons have shifted things back in favor of big business and the establishment and labor has been on it’s heels ever since. So has the middle class.
Love talking about all this stuff, but I’ve got to go and get after my children who’re tearing the house apart, I’ll catch you later.
Proud”man”
“Nobody forces wages upon someone. You always have the option to walk away and find work elsewhere.”
Yup that’s KINDA true. Thing is? All the other employers, or most of them, are greedy pricks like yourself. This has the effect of affording the potential employee the “freedom” to work for a jerk like you or starve.
Admit it. If the minimum wage disappeared tomorrow, you’d lower your wages for all your employees.
This is part of a fundamental flaw in American buisiness. Management or ownership sees the work force as an adversary. The work force has caught on to this. I can guarantee you Proud”man” that you do not get the best from your employees. They have ways of getting even with you that you do not see.
GOOD for them.
“They have ways of getting even with you that you do not see.”
List some examples. I’d love to hear how you think people are busy doing me harm.
Proud man do you get it? Can you see anything that I’m saying? The evidence of every thing I’ve said is everywhere.
That golden rule dig kills me, and is some rather twisted logic! I was talking about Politicians who annually make absolutely certain that their wages keep up with or exceed inflation, but have neglected to do that same thing for their least paid most vulnerable constituents. I can see from your stance of being forced to do what “I think is right” that you probably really do have an adversarial relationship with your labor whether you’d admit it or not. I doubt your profitability or not would change your perspective, but that policy would improve a lot of lives in this country at a slight cost to you and the other business owners in this country.
Do you really think that millions of people in the wealthiest nation in the world shouldn’t have health care and live in poverty so that 1% of the people in this country can have the preponderance of the wealth?
Even if you’re among them doesn’t that strike you as not being right? It really drives home the lack of empathy in this country and the inability for people to put themselves in the shoes of others.
Proud”man”?
Why would I help YOU?
J R,
I’m not looking for help. Just interested in what you think workers should do to ’screw’ their employer.
Dem,
Just because I don’t respond to a particular point doesn’t mean I don’t understand what you are saying. I’m not into writing dissertations on here to get every last detail. Your claim that people live without health care is downright funny. They may not have insurance, but they get health care when they need it. Poverty in the US? You should visit some real impoverished areas. Poverty in America is laughable by comparison. That is one thing I learned serving in other countries and here. The so-called poor in America have a dream life compared to people in real poverty.
That wasn’t a dig about the Golden Rule. I am pointing out that how you accomplish goals is just as important as that goal. That is why I’m a Libertarian. You should not go around forcing the country, or the world, to conform to your desires.
Your point about Poverty is well taken Proudman.
I have been abroad and there are a ton worse off than us. That’s no excuse for us to not get our act together.
As for health care, it’s way too expensive and poor folk having to go to the emergency room and in general only seeing doctors when there is a problem is a really expensive and inefficient way to do things(Mitt Romney figured that one out) and it’s still the case that the uninsured or the under-insured are one serious injury/illness away from being bankrupted and losing everything they have because the health care system in this country sucks.
The biggest problem is that everybody looks out for their own interests, but we’re so us against them fragmented and polarized that there no sense of what constitutes a common good and something worth sacrificing for.
It’s clear to me you would be offended and fight any politician who would mandate that you pay a fair and annually inflation adjusted minimum wage, even if it would be better for the country.
One thing that really excites me about Barack Obama is that there’s this sense that he if elected will attempt to unite the country to tackle some of this really hard stuff and call us back to doing not just what’s good for us individually but as a country.
Okay, my mistake. I see what you were railing against in that last post. I said millions don’t have health care, I meant to say health care coverage in the form of insurance.
In third world nations particularly in African countries there are literally millions without any health care and that is truly a tragedy.
Also in terms of the golden rule. I would say that if I were a business owner, I wouldn’t mind having a reasonable minimum wage imposed upon my by my government and indexed for inflation. So in this sense I am proposing a standard I would be willing to tolerate.
Actually, you are advocating a ’standard’ that would be forced upon us all. Does it really matter that you would tolerate it?
Proud Man, again your logic isn’t really hitting me.
The minimum wage EXISTS. It is a standard that’s been forced upon you (employers) already, just one that no longer does what it’s supposed to do because it has nothing like the purchasing power that it had at it’s inception.
That of course isn’t by accident, it’s by dent of lobby to keep it from being raised and therefore nullified by inflation. Mission accomplished!
I’m just talking about fixing it. But nobody wants to stand up to you bullies. The congress is or certainly has been these last ten years full of people who sympathize more with the concerns of business owners than with lower or lower middle income folk.
I betcha when the idea of a minimum wage was introduced, that small, medium and big business and other conservative interests lobbied hard against it and then when they saw they couldn’t kill it, lobbied all the more intensely to not have it float. Yup, I wouldn’t doubt for one minute that the scenario I’m describing occurred.
Dem,
Lets try a little exercise. What happens if the minimum wage was set today at $8/hr?
From my first post, the one you responded too…
“All the pro-small business owner lobbyist would bitch and moan about how it’d drive everybody out of business and cut into profits and all that crap, and how they’d have to pass the cost of it onto the consumer and drive up prices and blah skippy blah, but the side that no-one ever talks about is that FOLK MAKING MINIMUM WAGE ARE APT TO SPEND THEIR MONEY NOT SIT ON IT AND GROW THEIR FREAKING EMPIRES.
THE BENEFIT OF THAT CASH STREAMING BACK INTO THE ECONOMY, NOT TO MENTION THE NEEDS IT’D MEET FOR THE WORKING POOR IN THIS COUNTRY,WOULD MAKE IT A WINNING STRATEGY.”
Of course the party line for you small business types, higher prices passed on to the consumer bumping up inflation, the mass failure of small businesses, the stagnation of entrepreneurship because the cost of entry become prohibitive, etc…
Have you something else to add to that list? Perhaps the bumping up of everybody else’s wages who weren’t at the minimum wage before, but who are now and the monumental cost to Business of all size,…
To that I say it’s up to the individual employer whether they want to react to that pressure. Assuming the new value for the minimum wage was set to it’s approximate purchasing power at inceptions, (the value you’ve proposed is at least $4 low in today’s dollars) any employer could feel justified in employees making more than the minimum before be left at making the minimum now.
I think the real moral delimma employers would have to consider is if they have a profitable business already would the be willing to have a less profitable and absorb the new cost or keep their profit margins and add to inflation by passing their costs onto the consumer.
This is America, so I doubt the employers would be willing to take the hit.
You know what’s funny? You thinking that people who know how to manage money sit on it or hoard it. The fact that different people spend the money would not grow the economy any faster than it is now. Net effect, zip. Having more money will not benefit people who do not know how to properly use it. Their ’station’ in life is chosen, not dictated. They choose to live like they do. Having more money wouldn’t help them. Most likely they will give that money back to those who are wiser with finances.
But go ahead. Try to tell yourself that the minimum wage is some kind of lofty goal and not a tool of a political hack.
Proud”man”
So what you’re telling us here is that you are an asshole.
You HAVE money. And you use others to make you MORE money.
Me and a lot of other people are built different from you “proud”. We got out of the “MINE! MINE! MINE!” phase when we turned 4.
I’ll answer your earlier.
When the minimum wage is upped, greedy bastards like yourself will fire employees out of revenge. As they go out the door you will pretend at sadness and tell them, “Hey blame the Democrats.”
After awhile, your customers or consumers of whatever it is your feudal lordship presides over will note the lack of production or service of whatever. They’ll complain in you increase your prices.
SO, YOU will eventually decide that you’ve already got a pretty good deal making money off the backs of others. You’ll employ the staff that you need to best exploit.
And you will pay them the new minimum wage.
Now this may cost you an extra house or vacation or luxury your workers could never dream of. And that’s a good thing.
Why don’t you tell us what your business is so that we may not darken your door?
Prick.
.
I don’t think they (you) hoard the money, they do whatever they want to do with the money. Sometimes it benefits those around them as they build their business and employ more people, but that isn’t a guarantee, especially not now.
Nowadays, that money leaves the shores of this country to benefit exclusively them and to the detriment of the economy here. The point is that it’s your money to use as you see fit, you building your empire, doing for you and if that happens to help anybody else, well then so beit.
What poor folk would do with that money would benefit them, no difference here except that they would use it to meet their immediate needs and it would be more likely to go back into the economy and stimulate it.
Proudman “Try to tell yourself that the minimum wage is some kind of lofty goal and not a tool of a political hack.”
???
If you want to know what would happen if the minimum wage was raised, go and look at what happened when it was instituted.
It was all good.
The fact that it was brought into existence hamstrung and that year after year those who benefited from it had to fight to have it keep pace with inflation over and over is a damned shame.
It’s easy to see that the folks with the most money (to influence their elected officials) have won this battle ’til now.
But I must say proudman, to me and obviously to JR, you have not presented your case very well on this issue.
Most everything you say is some kind of affirmation with narry a statistic or even a logical train of thought. Now I’m not thinking for a second that this little conversation is some kind of persuasive argument, but I doubt anyone would be persuaded to your point of view based upon our exchange.
Dem,
While I do enjoy discussing things on the blog, there are a couple of things I keep in mind.
1. Nobody ever changes their mind based on these exchanges.2. I enter into these discussions to see what arguments the opposition will use.3. I generally do not present facts or evidence. Historically on a blog, such things are a waste of time. Besides, I’m not here to ‘win’ an argument.
As for the minimum wage discussion, business is generally far more robust than anyone (including myself) believes. People don’t want to go out of business so they adapt in the face of increasing regulation, like wage controls. So it appears that it was ‘all good’, but that wasn’t do to a minimum wage.
Finally, the minimum wage is akin to social security in politics. Politicians use both to get elected with their promises. They are like salesmen who benefit more when they get you to believe that they will deliver than by actually delivering. Take your idea for automatic increases in wage control. Politicians have no use for that because they need something to campaign on. Hence it’s just a tool of a political hack. Many of whom are very wealthy and don’t care about the poor, unless it’s an election year.
I learn a lot about different political situations and ideas from blogs that I subsequently research myself to try and understand the reality of a situation, not just the sound bytes. For instance I can see your point about the political nature of a minimum wage debate. Outlander made that point as well. It would explain why nobody would propose the measure, I’m suggesting (more than any reason you’ve presented as to why it’s wrong).
Also, I have changed my mind about some thing based upon what I’ve learned as well, but I tend to be a lot less concerned about proving my point than in coming to an understanding of a situation and what the best action might be going forward. I think very few are like me in that respect.
Also don’t underestimate the influence of your words on an opinion blog like this. Traditional news media is having a fit over the impact of internet media and blogs which has quickly become the new way to find out what’s happening and to weigh in epecially on Politics.
There could be all kinds of people who look at our exchange for as long as it’s online which could be years (or not). In this world, virtual and real you never know the impact that you’re having.
Again, I think that a newbie and a rising star, someone like an Obama could put this before the nation and pull it off removing it forever from the sphere of political gamesmanship. I don’t think it’s on his agenda however…
And truthfully in the spirit of gamesmanship, I think the Democrats could really use this to their advantage politically if they were willing to put an end to it’s use in this manner, by indexing the minimum wage for inflation (It’s certainly possible in a Democratic stronghold like Illinois) which could server as a test state for nouveau legislation in the same way Mass is doing for Romney’s version of Universal Healthcare.