Seattle, Washington, one of the strongest remaining bastions of liberal philosophy left in the country, passed a phased-in $15 minimum wage law earlier this year. The highest minimum wage in the country. The vote was unanimous and the throng outside cheered, but for many this is a loss from which they will never recover. It is a blow to the profitability of businesses that they just can’t take.
Even the left-leaning Seattle Times expressed concern wondering if Seattle had indeed “gone too far.”
According to the National Review Hotline, Kathrina Tugadi owner of Seattle’s El Norte Lounge, no longer hires musicians for her restaurant, she said she can’t justify expenses that don’t directly “add to the bottom line.” And, she says, hours will have to be cut: El Norte Lounge plans to stop serving lunch and only serve dinner.
“I am concerned about my business and others in the community, but it isn’t just about any one business. It’s about how the entire economic community,” she said. El Norte may be unable to remain open once the ordinance is fully in effect, she said. Even Pagliacci Pizza, a Seattle-area pizza chain, is moving its call center and some of its production facilities outside the city. That’s a lot of job loss, a lot of new people with a new wage of ZERO.
Socialist Council-member Kshama Sawant was the main proponent of the $15 ordinance. She and her supporters denied that the policy change would hurt businesses in the city. In one interview, Sawant said there need be “no unintended consequences.”
“No Unintended Consequences?” Who is she kidding? There are always consequences. In this case the consequences are the businesses that are downsizing, closing and failing, jobs that are lost, and most of all, people whose new hourly wage is ZERO. No unintended intended consequences? Are our politicians really that . . . stupid? Yes, I said it, Stupid. Do they really think taxes are irrelevant, businesses are omnipotent and that they can be drained in the name of politics without “any intended consequences?”
Do our politicians really not understand that our standard of living is the direct result
of one thing . . . the vitality of our businesses?
She went on to state that “any additional costs could come out of ‘extravagant profits’ rather than consumers pockets.” You have got to be kidding me . . . squared! Extravagant profits? Tell that to all the entrepreneurs out there who are trying desperately to make ends meet. Explain that to the mortgage companies they are trying to pay. And please pass that on to those on the street who’s job no longer exists. And, by the way:
where do you think every paycheck every employee has ever received came from?
Yes, Kshama, they came from business, all of them. And where do you think these businesses came from? They came from regular people like you and I who took a chance, rolled the dice, worked hard and were able to provide the people with something of value. All of them, that is where every single business you deplore came from.
You may think there are no intended consequences, but survey results tell a different story. Seattle Time contracted with a survey research firm to contact businesses in a broad range of industries likely to be impacted by the law. These are not businesses you’d describe as extravagant. Not surprisingly, nearly 70 percent of respondents in Seattle said that the $15 minimum wage is causing a “big increase” in their labor costs, and over 60 percent planned to pass on what they could to customers through higher prices.
But, according to Michael Saltsman, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, “price increases are not a silver bullet. After all, were businesses able to raise their prices at will without reducing sales, the minimum wage would be an afterthought. Customers have a choice: If prices increase, they could dine out less often or see one fewer movie a month. That’s why businesses are forced to adapt to a compulsory wage hike in other ways.”
In Seattle, 42 percent of surveyed employers were “very likely” to reduce the number of employees per shift or overall staffing levels as a direct consequence of the law. Similarly, 44 percent reported that they were “very likely” to scale back on employees’ hours to help offset the increased cost of the law. That’s particularly bad news for the Seattle metro area, where the unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds is already more than 30 percent — due in part to Washington state’s already-high minimum wage.
Perhaps most concerning about the $15 proposal is that some businesses anticipated going beyond an increase in prices or a reduction in staffing levels. More than 43 percent of respondents said it was “very likely” they would limit future expansion in Seattle in response to the law. One in seven respondents is even “very likely” to close a current location in the city limits.
Yes, it it always sounds good to give people more free stuff, but once again, everything has a price. I asked a group of sixth graders what they would do. It only took them a few minutes to determine that their only choices were to; fire some employees, raise prices, or go out of business. They also concluded that people won’t come to your store if you charge too much. If sixth graders grasp this, what is wrong with our politicians?
Seattle is the first city in the country to pass a $15 minimum wage. Survey results suggested it will be the first city to find out why it was such a bad idea.
No matter how badly we would like it to be otherwise, there are always a consequences,
and 2+2 will always equal 4.
I see the problem already, we can not raise wages locally, this must be a universal national wage hike.
Or, the federal government, (obama) should issue a law (executive order) to force all business to raise wages for all and force business to not raise prices, after all, how much do those greedy business owners need to make anyway?
Those at minimum wage will be $15, those at $10-$15 should be $25, those at $16-$20 should be $30.00 and so on.
This is the only way to unilaterally end poverty. Praise be to all socialist. Goddam, them socialist are some real fart smellers.
Gee, I am stunned. Who would have thought increasing cost of employing people would lead to fewer being employed.
To be a liberal, you must be ignorant of basic economics and the problems of running a business. It is a little hard to see what qualifications the Seattle City council actually have brought to the job.
To be a liberal, you must first learn two words, and recite them day and night: PERSONAL AGENDA. It’s not about the greater good. It’s not about compromise. It’s about ME! ME!! ME!! I AM IMPORTANT! I am more important than you! I judge you! You are less than me! MY needs will be met first! get the picture?
What’s the difference if you have 5 ignorant $8 / hr employees, or 3 ignorant $15 / hr employees?
I always love it when they say “Can I help you?” Then you ask “where is the xxxx” – and you get the blank stare.
I wanted a special shaped trowel – bLowes web site indicated there were 6 at a store near me. I was smart – I printed the page with the picture and part number.
You guessed it: The geniuses at bLowes told me they never heard of it. Then I produced the paper. Only after 10 minutes did they find the item.
Many of these people don’t deserve more than $8 / hr.
Dutchman, I went to an O’Reilly’s auto parts store a month or two ago looking for ph test strips to check the coolant condition. After standing inline for ten minutes the guy has no idea what I’m talking about. Out of 4 employees, 3 had no idea what I was talking about and the other “had heard of them” but had no idea if they had any. I just walked out. I then went to NAPA and they knew what they were and had them in stock.
Y’all are missing the point.
75% of the clowns elected to office have IQ’s below the level needed for abstract thought.
They are elected because they promise the Impossible to voters too stupid to be able to see how impossible are those promises.
Those same people are out-reproducing those who have IQ’s high enough to see all this.
There is only ONE path ahead.
IS- People who work at O’Reilly’s are cashiers, not mechanics. They can only search their database for products. How is it Americans don’t realize the service industry is just an industry of cashiers with different job titles?
Stephanie –
When I go to Auto Zone, I want the cashier to know some shit about how to change the water pump in my truck. That’s what I’m there for, to get the parts to change the damn thing. If they have a dumb-ass, jerk-off employee who knows nothing about nothing, I go to a different store. If I go to Home Depot, I want to talk to someone who knows how to tape & float drywall. I don’t need to talk with someone who is a professional auto mechanic, or a professional contractor, but I want someone there that can help me fill in the blanks that I don’t already know.
I can check the shit out myself, using the self-pay registers, like at Wal-Mart. If store “a” doesn’t have those kind of people on the payroll, I go to store “b”
Tim,
How you would like it (or expect) to be is vastly different than what it is currently. These people are cashiers. That is all. If you want to talk to someone who knows how to change the water pump in your truck, you would have better luck spending an afternoon drink in a bar than going to a retail establishment.
Those underachieving socialist bitches in Seattle don’t really care about minimum wage workers… If they REALLY gave a crap, they’d raise the minimum wage to $500/hour x40 hours per week x50 weeks per year = $1,000,000 per year. Don’t we all deserve to be millionaires?! If there “need not be any unintended consequences” to businesses from raising the minimum wage, then why be such cheap asses and stop at. $15. Those stingy bastards just don’t want the rest of us to get paid a “living wage”. We all deserve McMansions, brand new BMWs, the newest Apple gadgets, destination weddings, European vacations, the finest Chanel Dior and Prada clothes. Isn’t that what ‘equality’ is all about?
Not long ago I heard someone on that radio announce that when San Jose raised the minimum wage from $8.00/Hr to $10.15 there were no negative impacts at all, no one lost a job. Bull Shit! I know for a fact one restaurant owner closed his business because for him the minimum wage increase was the final straw that pushed him over the edge.
His business was doing OK until the 07/08 down turn. He tried to hold on at first thinking business would turn back up but for his business it didn’t. For several years he told me he was not drawing any salary and in fact was putting money into the business every month to keep the doors open. When the minimum wage increase went into effect he decided to call it quits. He laid-off half his workers and put the place up for sale. When the place sold, everyone was laid off.
So San Jose’s claim that no one lost their job as a result of the minimum wage law I know for a fact is FALSE!
One of his cooks lives about a block from me. I see him once in a while. He is still to this day out of a job. So even if he wasn’t one of the workers that were paid minimum wage, he still got hurt.
@indentured servant / tim: I had a similar experience at O’Reilly – my Volvo (and most European cars ) uses HOAT formulation anti-freeze. Not only didn’t those dumbfuck’s not know what it was, but they kept trying to sell me some shit ‘All purpose’ antifreeze – probably from China.
Here in Minnesota, Auto Zone is SPIC city.
Clammy, why the fuck would a person go to work in an auto parts supply store if they didn’t know something about cars? I don’t expect them to be actual mechanics but a loose understanding of how cars work and common parts and supplies seems like a minimum starting point to me.
You are probably right though but like Tim said, there is store “b”.
If all they are is cashiers, then again, like Tim said, I can ring my own shit up. Hell, point me to the kitchen in any restaurant and I can fill my own plate and even cook the shit first if I have to. No need for wait staff or cooks.
After high school and even long before that I always took pride in every job I did. I took it upon myself to learn more and do more than was expected of me regardless of how menial or low paying the job was. Most of my fellow employees did the same as each of us was looking to better ourselves whether that meant moving on to new digs or climbing the ladder where we were. I cannot tell you how rarely I see that kind of attitude today. It seems to have gone extinct. EVeryone still wants to get ahead but they don’t expect or even try to work for it.
The first job I ever had outside my neighborhood (age12/13) was shining shoes in a barber shop. After work I would come home and practice shining my dads military boots and shoes while he taught me all he knew on the subject. Quality of work was important but so was speed because guys aren’t going to stand in line very long to pay me to do something they could do themselves.
The best advice I ever got was from my dad when he told me to always excel at every job I ever did, always do the best job I could do, always work harder than the guy next to me and always be a bit early & leave a bit late. He said my primary job no matter where I worked was to make the bosses job easier. That advice has NEVER failed me. Most of the time it put me ahead of my co-workers.
Admin. et al – the hike in the minimum wage is entirely affordable, an will certainly not affect business profitability or viability – just as long as this minimum wage hike is matched by a decrease in the value of the dollar. “More bits of Paper” for the feel-good factor, but the SAME real spending power . . . .
Anyway, this all doesn’t really matter since, according to Lavrov – “There’s a war coming in Europe” – and that will certainly make things interesting Globally, especially for the survivors . . . . .
“Clammy, why the fuck would a person go to work in an auto parts supply store if they didn’t know something about cars?”
Because they need a job?
Look, I know there is a difference in generations when I say this- there is no moving up from the lower rung jobs. As I am look at the jobs market it would be foolish for anyone under the age of 35 to invest their time and energy into being an employee.
Steph – auto parts stores need managers, too. There is moving up. Hell, I know lots of kids under 25 even that have already moved up – way up in some cases. Why? Because the frigging competition is so weak, that someone with skills and sense can move up quickly. One young friend of the family is a site manager for a major commercial builder. On around $100k already. He is 23. 23!
If they are not going to be employees, what are they going to be? Parasites?
It is near impossible to start small businesses these days, so I doubt that is a viable option.
So, what are all these under 35s going to do?
You see the world through your own experiences and situations. Believe it or not, some young folks are doing just fine. But they have a different attitude than most young. They do not spend time thinking it cannot be done. The spend time doing it.
But the days middle class jobs/income for middling skills and education and effort are over with.
So, to be successful, the young need skills, intelligence, and an extreme work ethic.
Even bright kids refuse to get the right skills, and almost none have the personal fortitude to work hard.
So what do you suggest, Steph? Give up? Be parasites?
The reality is that there are no easy answers, but the young are going to have to transform themselves, or they will live very unsatisfactory lives.
IS – better questions are why the fuck would an employer hire them, or why the fuck would an employer not train them.
Llpoh-
Quite the opposite actually. Hemingway said “Hunger is good discipline and you learn from it”. My generation currently has the mindset of a lazy fat house cat. They never learned to hunt because someone is always feeding them. I say become as uncomfortable as possible. These service sector jobs are just good enough to prevent the lazy cat from learning to hunt. They make just enough money to not have to learn to hunt.
So people are saying that places that pay peanuts to employees provide poor service and those that pay a decent wage have staff who actually know what they are doing?
Steph – you are dead right. The cats will have to learn to hunt.
As sad as it is in some respects,a lot of folks will remember the current days of minimum wage jobs fondly, I suspect.
It is going to be a tough, cruel world. It really always has been, but folks have forgotten it.
I love the imagery of the cats.
Llpoh- From my observations minimum wages jobs are just one small step up from welfare. Th give you just enough to eat and have a roof over your head and give you enough pride to know you aren’t apart of the free shit army. But that creates a problem in itself. This nation is full of employees. There is no freedom in being an employee of a service sector job. Having your livelihood in the hands of shareholders and activist investors is more risky than investing in yourself. Jim Carry gave a commencement speech back in May, in it he said watching his father get laid off from his safe job impacted his life “If you can fail doing what you hate, why won’t you try to fail doing what you love”.
Adam – you are not generally going to get Einstein’s for minimum wage. But there is also little correlation between performance and wages. Managers are ultimately responsible for the performance of employees.
There are lots of bad managers out there. The world is full of them. I have known probably 1000s of managers and supervisors in my life. The number of good ones would be no more than 10.
People expect that managers will be good, and complain bitterly when they are not.
Managers tend to be good employees that have been promoted to their level of incompetence (Peter Principle and all that).
It takes skill, education, intelligence, an ability to plan, an aggressive streak, a willingness to do some very hard and emotionally draining things, an ability to divorce oneself from personal biases, an ability to be brutally honest, and an understanding of human nature, etc. to be a good manager.
One thing a manager does not necessarily need is technical competence in any given field. That is one of the biggest mistakes people who hire and promote managers make. The think the manager needs to know the particular field or industry the company is in. That is totally wrong, and results in a lot of folks being promoted that never should be promoted.
I work with four minnies currently. One other (a black guy) just left us due to the racist prick he had as a boss and he doubled his salary in the process and the boss he had just got canned. (That means one $100k job and one $45k job just opened up.) The other four are real go-getters with high school educations taking it upon themselves to excel at everything they do. They are hired in large part because of that ability and promoted because of it. One of minnies is being looked at for promotion to the $100k supervisors job. Several of their contemporaries only lasted a few months because they had the attitude that “getting the job, was the job”. Once hired they quickly hit stall speed and flamed out.
Another part of the advice my father gave was to do all of the things I previously mentioned even if the job/boss sucked ass while quietly looking for another job. If I and my work ethic were not appreciated after a reasonable period of time, let the employer know I had a better offer and then move on. Sure, you might have to move from job to job a bit until you find a place that appreciates your efforts but so what? The whole point is to better yourself and get ahead. Unlike finding excuses for failure, it takes a hell of a lot of effort.
“Managers tend to be good employees that have been promoted to their level of incompetence” (Peter Principle and all that).
Food for thought concerning Millennials- Professors tend to be good students that have graduated to their level of incompetence. This is why many are really unprepared after graduating college especially in the new economy.
Steph – I understand the point, but respectfully disagree.
I have given this particular thing a lot of thought. What I believe is that folks should do what they are good at, wherever possible. Just because I love art does not mean I am a good artist.
And most importantly, they should do jobs that are challenging. I have had hard jobs that by and large are not fun. Not fun at all. But the challenge of them is what brings satisfaction. The knowledge that you are good at something that is hard is something that is irreplaceable, as far as I am concerned.
And besides, there are very few fun jobs out there. That is a myth. If a person can find a job that he/she loves, and is good at, and is challenging – terrific.
But in general, I recommend folks go for jobs that push them to their limits. Those jobs are available. And they will provide a satisfying working life, in my opinion.
IS – your dad gave great advice. And I am glad you received it.
I have just one small quibble. Very often I hear folks talk about doing every job great, or excelling as you put it.
My experience is this – it is almost always better to do a average to good job fast than an excellent job slow. Especially in manufacturing. Throughput is very often more important than perfection. Sometimes perfection is indeed required, more far more often what is needed is to get the job done “good enough” and keep moving.
The keep moving part is what drives companies forward. The search for perfection can put folks out of business. Response times are very critical indeed.
“This nation is full of employees. There is no freedom in being an employee of a service sector job. Having your livelihood in the hands of shareholders and activist investors is more risky than investing in yourself.”
No shit. Working a job is not about your freedom. It’s an exchange of one thing for another. Always has been, always will be. Even hookers understand that. Billions of people have managed to get ahead and many were even inspired to create jobs for others by inventing a better mousetrap.
Even service sector jobs require foremen, supervisors, dept. heads, asst. managers and managers. Observe the habits of those above of you and be better than them. Be prepared every time a better position opens up but don’t expect to go from mop boy or waitress to manager in one or even two steps. It’s not rocket science and it won’t happen over night but you will get ahead.
I’d love to meet you in 20 years Clammy. I already know where you’ll be in life just based on the attitude you display here but I’d still like to see it for myself.
Oh well, I’m off to work.
Well, these laws just accelerate what seems like the inevitable. Which is, that as more technology becomes “intelligent”, more and more of us become obsolete in a world of mass production. This is not necessarily these people’s fault, as nobody can pick their own IQ. Yes. Many of these people can be better if they had the motivation or work ethic but that is only part of the problem. I think this is a HUGE problem for which we have to answer and many of us seem to be unable to grasp the implication of increasingly more advanced technology from an economic and societal perspective.
llpoh, I wondered that myself but did not mention it as I already know the answer. Much like parents that do not parent and subsequently leave their children with even fewer parenting skills than they had, the same thing happens in the workspace. Idiots with no skills get promoted to positions of authority and since they have no skills to speak of, they have no skills to pass on.
Whether you’re talking about govt, bosses or parents, it’s a self reenforcing, downward cycle of regression. Humans are regressing in just about every way possible.
Personally, whenever I encountered a dysfunctional employer I just moved on if there was no hope of improving the situation. At times where I was able to improve things, I got ahead.
Sure the job market sucks but something is wrong with the employees as well. I still have no doubt I could get ahead, and much faster than I did originally, if I was starting my working life today. There is no way I’d be wallowing in despair over how fucked up everything is. No way in hell!
Welcome to Argentina or Venezuela or some other exotic place. They can legislate all they want but cannot repeal the laws of physics.
I’ll go out on a limb and state that this stupid chick Sawant has never had to meet a payroll in her miserable existence.
When a power-hungry political hack can dictate what other people can and can’t do, then skate when reality causes massive unemployment, you have yourselves a recipe for disaster.
I hope the people of Seattle get it good and hard. They voted for this wench. Now it’s payback time.
Wouldn’t it be nice if with the stroke of a pen you could make people’s lives better?
I say this with experience: when you have a business that is profitable, esp. really profitable, you can pay employees really well (or just take the money for yourselves as my 2 partners did). But when the profit level drops, no matter how exceptional they are as employees, no matter how much you know they need the cash, wages have to drop.
Mike – there is a fine line to walk. In really good years the temptation is to reward the employees substantially.
I strongly advise giving rewards as salary, but suggest it might be possible to give it as bonuses, but that has drawbacks too.
Giving a significant increase in salary makes a permanent rod for your back, as if things slow up, it is hard to peel back increases.
On the other hand, if you give bonuses, you get the situation where they get pissed off if they do not get the same every year (or more). And they get quite miffed about how much you are possibly making if you can afford to give them bonuses, and so must be really ripping them off, and so should be really giving them lots more.
All in all, there is no winning. Best to just pay market rates.
No good deed goes unpunished.
1. discover what it is you have an aptitude for.
2. figure out what occupations value that aptitude.
3. settle on one you think you might enjoy. It’s easier to enjoy a job you’re good at.
4. find the fastest, cheapest way to obtain the knowledge/credentials necessary, and
5. be in the top 10% (5% is better) of those obtaining the knowledge/credentials.
This was what I encouraged my sons to do. All (ages 23-29) are very well employed (comp sci and mechanical engineering), all own houses, all are married to nice (well-educated) ladies.
The 20-somethings are not all lazy, or useless.
The sad part is that so few young people are given any decent guidance. Parenting is not rocket science, but it seems to require a lot more thought that many folks are willing to do, or capable of.
People, people, people. You are all missing the point, which is …… SUPPORT MINIMUM WAGE LAW PROPOSALS WHEREVER THEY OCCUR.
I’m drop-dead serious. $15, $20, or even $50 per hour? Go for it. Do what it takes to get this shit passed. Help make it a law, whether it’s Seattle, San Francisco, San Antonio, wherever.
Then sit back and watch it FAIL, and it will. One final bit of advice. Don’t do it in your community.
And while your at it reminds people they shouldn’t earning any more than a Chinese worker. Why do you think that being born in a certain country make you entitled to a plump pay packet?
llpoh said:
“I have just one small quibble. Very often I hear folks talk about doing every job great, or excelling as you put it.”
Point taken but I did not mean to imply perfection was the goal. I only meant to be better than my competition. Much like Scotty on the Star Ship Enterprise, you always have to hold something back so that you can pull a miracle out of your ass from time to time.
Perfection is rarely possible.
Minimum wage is just that, the minimum wage forced by government business owners must pay a prospective employee that seeks employment. Pretty fucking sweet deal if you ask me. Also, minimum wage is not a living wage nor should it be, it’s a learning wage.
Raise the minimum wage too high and you will price out every single young person out there seeking employment. Business owners will have no choice other than to hire the older more experienced worker. Another government created problem they will blame on anyone, but them, and the stupid people will believe.
All the risk is on the employer to train said employee, all the employee has to do is show up and collect his pay, he can cost the company thousands while they “learn” the job and then quit. Employees today think that whatever their level of debt is; student, car, cable tv, internet, data plan for a phone, etc etc etc is the employers responsibility to cover. Minis (not all) are happy to pay for the things they want, but its the business owners job to pay for the things they need to survive.
In my construction business we pay the going market based rate per hour for a certain skilled worker. The lower the skill level, the lower the pay, but as their skill level increases they produce more profit, they are rewarded with higher pay per hour.
Pay per hour is a minimum to retain employees for a year or so, for longer employment we provide “merit pay” every quarter based on personal job performance and crew job performance. They produce more profit, they share in the profit. We also, thanks to my benevolence from time to time, give PTO, or paid time off, if a employee or a crew kicks ass on a project, take the rest of the day off and mark down eight hours.
This works best in a smaller company, we have 16 full time employees some have been with us for over 15 years. We also provide paid holidays and vacation based on years with the company.
The only benefit we had to cancel was health care, our BC/BS plan was cancelled by the government, not sure what we are going to do yet as the offered “better” plan is not affordable.
Good comment Card were in the same business and run an identical compensation program with our craftsman with the same type of longevity with employees. It is simple really, if you have the freedom to take care of the people that take care of you then all can be happy and share in the success of the groups efforts. You can provide healthcare, bonuses, and earned time off when the market is open. When the government steps in and starts closing the market and tells you what you have to do, that’s when things fall apart for business. When our employee health plan was cancelled we lost some very good workers because they needed a good plan. Unfortunately we have not been able to replace it in kind with anything that we and our employees can afford and allow us to stay competitive in our work arena. Now we are being told that we need to almost double the wages for our entry level laborers which means we will do without and a bunch of young people will be missing out on an opportunity to be trained and gain skills to earn higher living wages and more. It is a shame really to be governed by incompetent ignorance at all levels.
PeaceOut your point about training the young people is so important. Unfortunately it is lost on the people who support these laws that bare no relationship to reality. Both government bureaucrats and many young people who think that just showing up brings value to whatever product an employer is trying to deliver. I have a plumber who told me recently that he has gone through 18 apprentices and not one has managed to stay on the job. Imagine someone is willing to pay you to learn a trade that will keep employed the rest of your life and you are too stupid or lazy to take advantage of it. This is not all young people, but in the construction industry, at least up here in the northeast, there is a dearth of young people going into the trades. These jobs will go to immigrants willing to get their hands dirty and who will work out in the cold of winter and the heat of summer.
So many of these kids have been brainwashed to think that they are special and that getting up early, showing up on time , working late and on weekends, brushing up on your skills on your own time and basically busting your ass is beneath them. We are in a time where labor is no longer a premium and whether the government likes it or not businesses will only pay what they can afford in order to maintain profitability. Many are in for a rude awakening.
Bob.
99% of the kids today think business owners wake up in the morning and think, “Today I’m going to hire me an employee.” As if it’s as simple as that.
Kids today can’t grasp the concept that for any private company to remain in business, they must produce more for the company than they are compensated for in wages. So, after they are trained at the employers risk and expense, they must actually produce profit in exchange for a wage.
Not just show up for a task and collect a paycheck all the while bitching about their lot in life.
Here in West Michigan we also have a difficult time finding young people willing to learn a trade. They all need to start at apprentice level but want journeyman wages, because they have bills to pay?
When illegals are legal, this will doom the young American’s future. Democrats know not what they cheer for.
Detroit is striking this morning in solidarity to the $15 an hour mandate.
They must not realize that they are striking for their future unemployment.
If the few businesses left in De’toilet have to meet a $15 minimum, I can see quite a few closing shop.
What every politician and 95% of ‘murkins neglect to take into account:
business owners are in business because they WANT to be.
Continuous mandates, fines, compulsory regulations, paperwork and inspectors eventually takes a toll on the “want” to.
When he/she has finally had enough. Enough weeks without pay, enough tax bills, enough bureaucrats, enough lawsuits, enough whiny-assed workers, they will close it down and go Galt.
It is barely worth the upside potential anymore. If either of us had taken union-gigs in the 80s, instead of trying to create something, we would be living twice, if not three, times better than we are now.
And when we go home at night, we would have NO worries about losing it all to a heavy-handed jackboot.
The funniest thing is that they STILL have no idea how special they are and how good they got it.
I keep thinking there is some point that people wake the hell up and realize that NONE of these things are actually enacted to make our lots better. They are being enacted to destroy the rest of the non-government middle.
Agenda 21 is not a conspiracy, it is a fact. Everyday a new law/regulation/treaty proves the existence. And every single day the vast majority of Westerners refuse to believe it.
We prefer to believe our shiny gadgets and slick “reporters” over the reality that surrounds us all.
It’s so upsetting that people in Seattle (that’s supposed to be in the top 3 most educated cities in US) can be so clueless! Like it was mentioned before: NOTHING comes free. This will not be a step forward but a huge setback that will turn Seattle into a dirty, dangerous and crowded place. People from other cities and states will come here to try and get these “well-paying” jobs just to end up unemployed and add to the already increasing load of people who will end up needing wellfare and other benefits. Everything that makes us love Seattle and be proud will be compromised: great food, infrastructure, health, cleanliness, low unemployment rates, low crime – and on so forth. Even those who will kept their jobs and get paid more will suffer and be dumbfounded by “why don’t I qualify for medicaid anymore?” , “how am I supposed to afford a nanny now?” , “why do I have to pay this much in taxes?”, “why am I having to pay more for everything and wait longer?”
I am honestly scared of what the next couple of years will bring.
I’m sure this has been covered by other people before but most of this seems like simple math to me.
The cost of goods and services in individual areas are driven by a lot of different variables of which labor cost is a significant contributor. If the current standard of living is associated with the current minimum wage baseline, and if all things are equal that baseline is elevated to accommodate the new minimum wage, it seems all costs of goods and services would rise proportionally to the increased labor cost. So would the minimum wage worker be any better off than he is today? Would his buying power increase? Would his standard of living be any better? I would think not.
“As I am look at the jobs market it would be foolish for anyone under the age of 35 to invest their time and energy into being an employee.”
Color me a fool then, my wife as well. Right now we are overworked, underpaid, and fighting to get recognition.
Its coming. I’m a lab manager, she manages the website and all web-related services for a largish hospital.
We are top 5% for our community, top 15% (?) for the US.
Both of us are age 28. I have a host of other friends in similar positions. Some of us served in the military, some went to tech school, some went to college and some got real life experience at work.
A fact people still seem to forget is that despite all the bullshit going on, this is still the most freedom the middle class of a society has enjoyed for millennia, especially in the US.
You can still build yourself up in the US, some have it easier than others but its still possible. Education is easy to come by, experience only slightly less so. There are opportunities all over the place.
The one stupid fucking thing that throws a wrench in it all is that it was easier for the previous 50 years….and to that I say, who fucking cares? Statistical anomalies have to occur, and the stretch enjoyed by the boomers and silents was just that, a blip.
The Millenial Generation has a wonderful opportunity to start righting the ship, and best way to do that is start taking care of ourselves right the fuck now.
Too bad I’m wasting my words. Only something like 10% of people in my age bracket believe in the value of hard work, the rest are shiftless lickspittles and lap dogs, people only valuable due to their voting power whose sole contribution to society consists of the epic amount of bitching and moaning that goes on in the world.
On topic:
I think minimum wage is required in a nation that allows mega-corporations to control policy. A company like Wal-mart can move into an area, and then drive every mom and pop business underwater with ludicrously low prices.
These megacorporations act as mobile monopolies, moving into areas and completely consuming every last shred of business an area produces. This allows them to price fix (jobs) and if it weren’t for minimum wage laws we’d all be wage slaves.
Want to get rid of minimum wage? Then bring back actual free market capitalism, and start dissolving monopolies.
I go to McDonalds to score some pot.
I go to Lowes to get information on smart phones.
I go to Auto Dealers to be ignored by the mechanics.
I go to Olive Garden to get advice on making Kraft macaroni and cheese
So are they selling twenty dollar hamburgers yet?
If you stay home or live with a bunch of people.Low wages suck only so bad.. This used to be for like high school kids. Now these are normal wages for the average job. And people can’t pay bills on it.
Housing and transportation. Energy costs and food have all gone up.
Makes you understand why people deal drugs.
SAH–Your post was right. It is the logical extension of the price control of wages. Yes, it is price control. An we all know that price control doesn’t work, ask Dick Nixon. It leads to a dearth of what ever is price controlled. See–Argentina, Venezuela.
Yes, make it $30 an hour or $100 an hour. God knows the poor need it. But, then the fallacy of the proposal becomes obvious. :You suddenly have no business, no taxes collected, and no employes.
The cost to an employer is more than just $15 an hour. There is a myriad of taxes that need to be paid to all levels of gov. which are based on hourly pay. The supplies that a business uses come from companies that must raise their prices because they must pay their employes more. Therefore, supplies cost more. The customer base goes down, a $7 meal becomes a $15 dollar meal. Who can afford that? Soon, businesses fold. Your choices diminish. You become less free.
This brain dead twit in Seattle that proposed this thinks that when you throw a pebble into a pond that you only see the splash. She refuses to see the ripples.
Gee! Magical thinking is alive and well in Seattle.
The unintended consequences of price control is shortages, higher prices, black markets which are out of the purview or gov. regulation and other distasteful outcomes.
Think about the 18th Amendment and the emergence of Speakeasy’s. Maybe that is in Seattle’s future. All the restaurants have closed and you want to take your gal out on the town, so you walk down a darkened alley, knock on a door three times and a voice asks what you want and you say Joe sent me and you enter Foodeasy and have a good meal for $7 dollars. Hahaha.