bbauska

What do you want the minimum wage to be? $12? Maybe $15?

I'd like it to be high enough that a person working 34 hours a week wouldn't qualify for food stamps.
Why?
to eliminate the need for the state to subsidize the employers...

I'd also like there to be laws that would limit the practice of scheduling employees to keep them to a number of hours below what they would qualify for benefits.
to eliminate the need for the state to subsidize the employers.

I linked you to a google books book on walmart.. If you take the time to read some of it, you'll understand better the kinds of exploitative policies they follow.
They haven't changed the way they try to avoid paying their employees since Sam tried avoiding paying the minimum wage in the 60s by setting up phantom companies...

Your scenarios, by the way, make a strange assumption. That raising the floor somehow distorts the competitive spectrum. If a minimum wage is higher, those who are currently at minimum wage stay there. And everything else adjusts. If MW is cost of living adjusted annually, the competitive spectrum never really changes. If someone goes to McDonalds or Walmart they'll always start at the minimum...
If this affects profits thats too bad. A company that can only make the required profit by ensuring that its work force requires food stamps to get by, is a parasite company. Not only is it exploiting its work force, its exploiting tax payers who have to pick up the tab for the food stamps and unfunded health care costs that the company has avoided. I can't understand why you who thinks individuals should stand on their own two feet, can't understand that companies should have to exist without ongoing subsidies for their labour. Is this really your world view?

I offered the example in Bangladesh as an example of what happens in a world where there is no minimum wage or labour laws enforced, Bbauska. Your comment on trade policy is irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant is the assumption you make that market forces can be used by employees ... That's never been the case in the history of the industrialized world on a broad scale. In a country with 14 % un or underemployed like the US... the market force is all in the hands of the employer..... Without a minimum .... they would go lower. As Sam Walton did when he started his business ...

bbauska wrote:My point in this example is you can raise the wage, and take away the desire for going up the ladder and bettering your position in the company. You get paid the same for doing a higher level job. How is that for the "fairness" that is wanted? Class envy? Really?

$8.81 and hour to $9.81 an hour = Class envy? Really?

bbauska wrote:As for the Bangledesh factory... I am all for having every all products made in the US only, and exporting our products. Let's tariff the incoming items so high that it is not cost effective to have factories elsewhere. Let the other countries deal with the unemployment themselves. If other countries want to raise the tariffs on us, I am ok with that as well. I feel America is much more self sufficient than Bangledesh, and they can make that choice. Damn... There is that word again!

I want the choice to have all my shoes and underwear made somewhere else so Americans can do better things with their time. I mean, if we're going to spend all this money educating people and giving them health care, and social security benefits, don't we want them doing something more than you can get someone in China making 25 cents an hour to do?

And that's the choice the nation has made: I think we learned our lesson with Smoot-Hawley.

(As an aside, we took the kids to DC a few weeks ago and absolutely everything at the Capital gift shop is made in America. I looked.)

nobody answered the question of teens and part timers who are simply looking for extra spending money not requiring a "living wage". And why is walmart the bad guy here? If the law sets the minimum wage and Walmart pays it, then why are they the bad guy while the hardware store down the road who pays minimum wage is not? "They can afford it" mentality is why, the same as taxing the rich beyond reason, the exact same as robbing a bank ...because they can afford it.

I stated earlier that Walmart is terrible in oh so many ways, they have tremendous turnover and that results in crappy employees and crappy service. It results in Walmart having to spend all that much more money trying to retrain employees, more money trying to combat this horrible image, this is Walmart's choice. If people stop working there, they will be forced to pay more...same as the McDonalds near me, they can't get enough kids to work for them at minimum wage so they need to pay more, they pay even MORE to those who work during school hours since the kids they depend on for these lowest of paying jobs have to go to school. The market will adjust and Walmart has to figure out the sweet spot for THEM.

tom

nobody answered the question of teens and part timers who are simply looking for extra spending money not requiring a "living wage".

What about them?

Tom

And why is walmart the bad guy here? If the law sets the minimum wage and Walmart pays it, then why are they the bad guy

WalMart is following the law. The law is stupid.
WalMart is the bad guy, because they know that they have employees that rely on food stamps and medicare. In some places they council their part time employees how to get them. (If your local hardware store dos the same, shame on him too. But WalMArt employs more than any other retailer so they set a trend. )
And they pursue this and their short hours policies knowing that their employees will rely on benefits paid for by taxpayers like you ...
They are corporate parasites. Willing to pursue these policies to enhance profits .... without shame that the government is subsidizing those profits.

GMTom wrote:And why is walmart the bad guy here? If the law sets the minimum wage and Walmart pays it, then why are they the bad guy while the hardware store down the road who pays minimum wage is not? "They can afford it" mentality is why, the same as taxing the rich beyond reason, the exact same as robbing a bank ...because they can afford it.

To be clear, I never said Wal-Mart was bad. Not at all, they are following the rules, near as I can tell.

My point was that the choice Brad posited was a false choice. If you raised the minimum wage (by a buck) no one at Wal-mart would lose their job or see their service suffer. Most likely an unnamed third option would occur: They would make $1,000,000,000 less in profit every year. A big number, but only 5% of their US operating income.

I asked for the level that is a "living wage". To date, we have not gotten the number. I haven't gotten an answer on how the raise of minimum wage would affect a business with 3 employees.

If $9 is enough, then come to Washington State, we are already there.

Fixation on a 'number'? How about enough not to qualify for food stamps. I think we already saw numbers on that.

For a household of 1 it is $1,211 per month. If you work 40 hours per week X 4.33 weeks per month, at $7.25 per hour you are at $1,255.

The SNAP minimum is higher if you have a larger household; in many states, the minimum wage is higher.

I think we should restrict what you can buy on SNAP the way you do in the UK. So, if you want potato chips and large sugary sodas, you'll have to get a job..

Exactly why I want the number. We have provided data on how much 1 at $7.25 is. That is enough to not be on food stamps. The standard is met currently. That is why I asked for a number.

Unless, of course, you work a 7 hour day. Or allow for people not being able to work full 8 hours a day. Or if they are in the service industry and get a lower wage with the assumption that tips will make up the difference. Or they don't get paid holidays. Or don't work (or get paid for) federal holidays. Or never go sick and unpaid for that period.

It's pretty close, even so. I make it about $1,100 a month on a 35-hr week. If there are 8 federal holidays not being worked or paid for, I make it $1,218. If someone wants 2 week's holiday a year (about half of the UK lower limit on paid holidays), $1,208 on average. All of those closer to or under the food-stamp level. Combine all three factors, and it becomes $1,023.

Besides - One thing that has always confused me about 'work'. Despite the fact that it is theoretically much more efficient than before, a virtue is made of doing as much as possible. What we have in our modern society is a situation where those who are working are working long hours (and studies indicate that once you start adding more hours over 7-8 a day, it becomes less efficient), and there are many not working.

And those not working end up being paid for out of the taxes of those who are. Some are lazy, others are just finding it hard to get work (especially during recessionary periods), but of course some like to use the former as a stick to beat the latter, and turn the people in work against those out of it.

A lot of 'work' is actually not very productive. I know that the public sector gets a rap, but the reason we know about the waste is that taxpayers and governments and watchdogs are alert to it there. In the private sector a combination of 'commercial confidentiality' and not caring as long as there are profits or the stock price looks good means that it gets missed. In theory, inefficient companies would lose out in competition to efficient ones. In reality, that isn't always the case ('brand loyalty', common inefficiencies across a sector, common management errors, offsets from economies of scale, cost of entry barriers....), but it's seldom made public.

Indeed, sometimes the quest to improve efficiency can be counter-productive - micro-managing things, setting short-term financial targets, too much change (or poor change management)...

I read your post a couple times. I have a couple of comments:

It reminded me of a quote from Macbeth. "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". Still not a number for minimum wage that would apply to EVERYONE. Not just the "single mother with 3 kids". There were lots of excuses for why work is not the solution.

It seemed empty to me. (no offense intended)

None taken. I don't think a 'number' is the way to think of it, frankly. But I was simply showing that the numbers that have been suggested show that the standard minimum wage only just barely exceeds the food-stamp level, and in reality will see quite a few people who work claiming.

Of course, the US being very big, there are different levels of living standards costs in different places. There is also going to be a changing landscape with inflation etc. So no 'number' alone will settle it.

The rest? Ah well, if you think the system works, and have been brought up to believe in it, it's going to be hard to challenge it, or the propaganda put out to defend it. So it goes.

No doubt the propaganda goes in both directions. One man's propaganda is another man's truth, and vice-a-versa.

And, to go all anti-rickyp on you, how about this: you worry about some not working full-time?

What do you suppose many employers will do to avoid the Obamacare mandates?

That's right--limit their employees to 29 hours. It's called "unintended consequences."

No one's ;likely to defend Obama care Fate.

The basic failing is that the US has decided to provide health insurance through employers.... Obama has incrementally improved the delivery of health insurance but it doesn't over come this basic failing. And as you point out, exploitative employers will find a way to minimize their benefit costs to the detriment of their lowest paid labour.

If you think its a failing that companies will cut back hours so that they can avoid paying benefits under Obama Care then, if you are at all consistent, you have to think its a failing that companies like WalMart manage to keep so many workers "part time" through careful computer generated work schedules today. And have be doing so for decades.