Raising minimum wage to $15

[Toasted_Chromosomes 249 / 4,930]

There has been a lot of news buzzing around the fact people are protesting about raising the Federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15.

 

So is raising the minimum wage to $15 a good or bad idea? I do not support raising minimum wage to $15

Edited December 2, 2016 by Toasted_Chromosomes

[Ben 2,378 / 31,877]

Bad idea.

If minimum wage gets increased to $15, there are greater chance that employees will have their hours cut, and store prices to be increased, and pretty much what Jerry have said above.

[Rcool64 1,007 / 16,299]

There are many people who don't try school, are basically forced to live a life at mcdonalds, then complain about the pay. If you don't like your pay, maybe you should have actually tried in school and got a college degree...

[ShakaYourBooty 25 / 2,376]

Uhh. I am not voting because

 

1. I don't believe GFL should get political, we are a gaming community there is no need for political arguments... it would only disrupt stuff.

 

2. I don't believe we should have a minimum wage we are worth what we get or find someone who will pay you the money you want (aka. get educated yourself you fat couch potato)

[snapshotchris1 2 / 1,614]

Its good but also bad, employees will lose their jobs, and there wont be benefits such as health insurance people get for working for a certain place due to the doubled waage, if their is an increase to minimum wage it should only be by a little bit

[Argyros 35 / 2,141]

Bad, any person who says otherwise didn't learn much in economics.
This doesn't just decrease hours or outsource their jobs. It causes inflation, not only this, but the cost of living goes up. 
Equilibrium plays a role in this since wages will increase so will price, this is part of economic equilibrium where demanded and supply are equal.

Example draw a graph, on the y-axis title it cost of living while x-axis is the wage. 

y and x are proportional in this case due to having an equilibrium as x gets bigger so does y.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Argyros

[Cypher 1,187 / 11,383]

Yep. There's no point if, because corporations are shelling out twice as much money in labor, they'd try to recoup that in sales. Inflation is already absurd. 

[Darkling 2,041 / 23,470]

Recently in England we raised our minimum wage and are planning to raise it again for what we have named the Living Wage.

 

This has already caused some businesses to make cuts in a big way!

 

Some have made the money back from raising prices (cost of living)

 

Some have taken most if not all of staff benefits away such as a supermarket chain called Morrisons which has taken literally all of the benefits away from the staff. Night pay, gone. Staff discount, gone. Sunday premium, gone. Paid breaks, gone. Staff made redundant (Fired).

 

Companies will give with one hand to bring up the wages but someone will suffer! Either staff lose out, or the public get huger prices.

 

What they need to work on is the distribution of money between corporations paying very little for there staff on small hour contracts and then taking massive pay rises.

[Moo Im A Goat 128 / 4,378]

A higher min wage would just inflate the economy. Prices would just go up to deal with a higher wage. So i dont think it would solve anything. 

[Crusty 248 / 5,311]

Edited December 8, 2016 by Crusty

[Z1galord 499 / 8,437]

Bad Idea.

Any brain dead zombie knows if you raise minimum wage that high quickly, it could potentially throw us in a major recession or depression even. Reason why is employees will get lose their jobs, inflation will do it's thing and raise prices dramatically (And we all know how the hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe went... that's right 1,000,000 Zimbabwean Dollars for a loaf of bread), unemployment raise(It's hard to get a minimum wage job in certain areas right now, imagine that nation-wide). Lastly, people in positions, say $45,000 a year, won't get a raise and will get screwed because they're barely making more money than someone who makes the $15 minimum wage.

 

Those 2 people who voted for it being a good idea, and you know who you are, yes it gives people more moo-lah, but it also raises prices.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Z1galord
Forgot another reason.

[CNe7532294 171 / 4,777]

You know those self-checkouts lanes at the grocer's? You'll be seeing more of those when the wages go up. Best advice, climb up by working hard and studying. Flipping burgers is not a career. On the flip side, I hear electrical/electronic and software techs will shoot up. Lrn2 code, multimeter troubleshoot, and solder. Machines breakdown eventually after all.

[Coolest Cat 1,266 / 14,449]

Great idea.

 

Automation is inevitable. Let's just get it over with. 

 

Edit:

Going from $7.25 to $15 real quick will almost definitely cripple the economy due to the sudden increase to automation. But we should definitely increase it just so the automation discussion is brought up more and more. It's inevitable. The ridiculous idea of "bringing jobs back to the U.S.!" is somehow still alive despite it being a complete pipe dream at this point. We should quickly try and crush it since the reality is that jobs coming back will probably end up being done by a machine anyhow (if not possible now, it will be possible soon). The fact that when people ask about raising the minimum wage, others are ready to warn about automation goes to show that it's something most are aware of but never actually discuss. It really does seem that the problem most people have with a $15 minimum wage is the unemployment it will cause due to automation and nothing else.

 

Hopefully we realize that there'll come a point where using a machine to flip burgers is the more cost effective choice and when that happens, the only 2 options is to lower the minimum wage or lose jobs. (or be a complete Luddite about it and pass legislation to keep jobs no one should be doing).

Edited December 11, 2016 by Major_Push

[Cypher 1,187 / 11,383]

Most people who work minimum wage jobs and are complaining about wages are the people who don't have the skill set or opportunity to better themselves and their careers. Automation putting these people out of jobs is going to shoot employment rates up. I don't disagree that automation is inevitable, or that it's bad, but the population has to have a chance to be prepared for that. 

[Wilford_brimleyy 593 / 8,185]

How about bumping Military pay to 15 per hour...

[Mister Spiffy 28 / 2,451]

The sad thing is some EMT Basics and Firefighters in my county don't even make the same as Mcdonald workers, and they work there asses off! Some of these guys make $12.30 while mcd workers make $14.00. The EMTs have been asking for a raise the past 4 years now, but the tec companies shut them down because they dont want them making more then themselfs. Now people want to make $15 working at mcdonalds and everyone is protesting for it. WTF guys?!?!?

Edited December 11, 2016 by Sacrifice_Hodor

[Coolest Cat 1,266 / 14,449]

8 hours ago, Cypher said:

Most people who work minimum wage jobs and are complaining about wages are the people who don't have the skill set or opportunity to better themselves and their careers. Automation putting these people out of jobs is going to shoot employment rates up. I don't disagree that automation is inevitable, or that it's bad, but the population has to have a chance to be prepared for that. 

 

Yeah.

And no one's going to prepare until it starts to actually become a threat. Which is why I think that we should raise it so we actually do see some job losses.

 

Sucks for those guys but it'll be better than just having it all hit us at once. Shed off some of the jobs now so those people can actually look for other jobs. That way everyone doesn't just start dropping off like flies in the 2020's. The one that will hit us hard will be automated cars and truck drivers. That's 3.5 million jobs on the line that at the moment can't be replaced properly. Come 10~20 years, a significant portion of those jobs will be replaced. There's also taxi/uber/lyft drivers that can/will be replaced by self-driving cars. The tech to replace cashiers and burger flippers is there now but isn't being implemented. The longer we wait, the closer it will coincide with the self-driving cars problem. There's also other jobs that are being done by accountants and what not that can be replaced by machines. 

 

Or our government can do the smart decision and just start preparing for it by doing quite literally anything. But since we have a republican government for probably the next 4 years, we're probably not going to see government programs to help the people who need it since republicans have traditionally favored the free market over government intervention. 

 

Now, I think that a $7.50 to $15 is beyond absurd since that'll just cripple the economy right now. But slightly increasing it every few years to dip our feet will probably be best. Either way, I do hope that there comes a point when machines can replace people without it causing a massive ripple effect that threatens the entire economy. Universal Basic Income sounds like an interesting idea for that one, but I'm not an economist so idk. Either way, our government is avoiding the problem and is going after pipedreams like bringing factories back to save jobs. Job creation is nice, but making sure that massive unemployment doesn't sweep over the nation in a few years is much much better. 

[CNe7532294 171 / 4,777]

On 12/11/2016 at 5:06 PM, JerryHatTrick said:

I used to work IT - the issue I have with this is that we live in an era where it is cheaper to get a new "thing" than pay to have the old one repaired.

 

Depends on the case. If it's a consumer computer to a popular kiosk in which there are literally millions of units to take a damaged one's place then yes I agree. Some "computers" no longer even use screws and are essentially glued or press fit together. Most of the time they require the entire assembly to be replaced. Its sad if it's just a chip on said assembly that fried but that's how it is indeed. This case actually just happened to me over the weekend trying to repair a dead LCD driver for an Agilent E4419B. I ended up with more labor taking the front assembly apart than if I had just replaced the entire thing. Still you never know. Maybe said unit will be well liked but is defined obsolete by the manufacturer (as in the my case where the labor is justified given scarcity of parts or an overpriced newer model) or maybe we'll have legislation to limit the amount of garbage in the future when that becomes a huge problem if not already. Happened before with tires. Skeptical it'll happen in these 4 years but we never know.

[TSARGA 57 / 3,122]

The minimum wage should be eliminated.

 

How is it that there are people who get paid more than the minimum wage? Why do employers buy their services for more money than they have to? Because they have no other choice, the worker sells their work to the employer who offers the most for it. The employer, of course, wants the best worker they can get for as little as possible. If a worker has experience that will benefit a company, then the company will offer them more money so they work for it (and not for a competitor). If a job doesn't require much experience, then there's a lot of potential workers, so whoever gets it must accept a lower wage.

The law of supply and demand also applies to the labour market: the more expensive something is, the less demand there is for it. Artificially increasing the price of work decreases demand for it. The ones whose work is worth less than the minimum wage will suffer the most from such an increase - mostly young people, graduates who have no professional experience. Such people can work for less than the minimum wage, because they don't have big expenses (no car, no children, no house, etc). That first, lowest career stage is perfect to acquire some experience for further stages. Introducing a minimum wage eliminates that first stage, which makes the first step much more difficult and artificially increases demand on higher education (as people need additional education to start at a higher stage). If a person's work is worth less than the minimum wage, then that person is basically unemployable. So what's better: no job, or a low wage with professional experience? The answer is pretty obvious.

 

And what happens when an employer still needs workers, no matter the minimum wage? There are two possible scenarios in this situation:

1. the employer fires some workers and overworks others in order to increase their wage (quid pro quo).

2. the company increases the price of the product.

Note that the first scenario means discrimination against the less experienced, and that the second one hurts the consumer and makes foreign competitors advantaged.

 

Minimum wage means:

- higher prices of goods

- higher education is required

- higher youth unemployment

 

On 11/12/2016 at 6:01 PM, Christmas_Diabetus said:

How about bumping Military pay to 15 per hour...

Supply and demand: if the army doesn't have enough soldiers, then yes.

 

On 11/12/2016 at 5:42 PM, Cypher said:

Most people who work minimum wage jobs and are complaining about wages are the people who don't have the skill set or opportunity to better themselves and their careers. Automation putting these people out of jobs is going to shoot employment rates up. I don't disagree that automation is inevitable, or that it's bad, but the population has to have a chance to be prepared for that. 

On 12/12/2016 at 2:16 AM, Major_Push said:

Either way, I do hope that there comes a point when machines can replace people without it causing a massive ripple effect that threatens the entire economy. Universal Basic Income sounds like an interesting idea for that one, but I'm not an economist so idk. Either way, our government is avoiding the problem and is going after pipedreams like bringing factories back to save jobs. Job creation is nice, but making sure that massive unemployment doesn't sweep over the nation in a few years is much much better. 

Automation is very good, as better means of production give us cheaper product, which makes the economy more optimal. The economy is all about eliminating jobs - the fewer people are needed to do something, the better.

 

[chancer839 0 / 1,612]

or how about you work hard and go to school instead of asking to be paid for minimum work?