Does it seem peculiar to anyone else, that a government forcing employers to pay 16-year old hamburger flippers $30,000 per year, is effectively the government forcing existing businesses to fund a private welfare system at their expense?
Two 16-year old's with no job skills or experience in the workplace, could flip hamburgers and pull down a $60,000 annual household income, beginning their first day on the job! Does that seem realistic considering the current state of our moribund economy?
Is that supposed to be something that would encourage young people to even finish high school?
It would, however, likely provide a real boom in the illegal drug trafficking industry.
Where does it leave folks who have labored their way up to
actually being worth $15 per hour?
Minimum wage generally comes up as a subject during a moribund economy. In a failed economy where jobs are not plentiful,
laborers must compete against each other for the few jobs that are available. People that can't get jobs tighten their belts since they obviously can't spend, so the economy continues in a downward spiral of reduced employment that results from reduced consumption, that feeds on itself. Employers are able to start new employees at lower wages than they would in a healthy economy, and need to, since they are unable to afford to pay higher wages in a weak economy when sales are down, and still remain competitive.
Opening discussion of raising the minimum wage, is a tacit admission by politicians that propose it, of having ushered an economy into failure.
On the other hand, during times of robust economic growth,
employers must compete against each other for employees, primarily by offering higher wages and better benefits. Which employers can afford to do since their sales and profits are higher. Employers must also keep aggressively raising wages of employees that they value - at all levels - in order to keep them from being attracted by offers from other employers and leaving. In a good economy only unmotivated slobs that don't much care for work complain, who are the same type that work for the required number of months to qualify for unemployment, then quit and run the limit on benefits, only to repeat the cycle.
In the long run raising minimum wage does little for the lower middle class and poor, since the higher wages will not only reduce the number of jobs, but will have an inflationary effect on everything they need to consume, from housing to hamburgers, leaving even those earning the wage with little more purchasing power. But higher prices will certainly further break the backs of those not working, like the elderly whose savings accounts have already been decimated, by continued artificially low interest rates on their savings for decades.
Heck, why not raise minimum wage to $30 per hour so that our 16-year old hamburger flipping couple can be raking in $120,000 per year? While we're at it why not mandate that employers provide for their employee's housing?
The answer of course is the same as against raising min wage to $15 per hour, because whatever is produced with artificially inflated wages, will wind up being too expensive for existing market conditions, and will result in layoffs and higher unemployment or insolvent businesses. As if the tax and regulatory burdens weren't enough to already have small business operating on the edge.
In other words, when the prices of fast food go up, more folks will rediscover the economy of carrying bologna sandwiches from home, rather than grabbing burgers at fast food joints for lunch. So even more folks will be out of jobs and even more businesses unable to survive. This is the last thing our country needs with the black youth unemployment rate at 36%, while the civilian labor force participation rate remains near lows not seen since 1978. The last thing we need is U.S. commerce being turned into a welfare system, by way of government forcing employers to overcompensate employees.
http://www.islamchristianforum.com/index.php?topic=4177.0
