12-08-2013, 05:05 AM
quote:
There is a HUGE problem with this argument.
The people that make the most money in this country. Those that make $550 million a year. The 1%, those people rarely worked for anything. Yes, they may have gone to college, but the 1%, the people in charge they didn't work for anything. The vast majority of them were born into that money, or brotherhooded into those positions (Bloodlines fraternity etc.)
Its not like the CEO of walmart, worked his way up with a single mother raising 5 kids in a suburb in NYC, got educated and worked his way up from the mailroom. It doesn't work like that, though some extremist people would make you believe that the uber rich actually worked ofr their money.
The cold truth is, the Rothchilds, the Morgans,etc... they have been and will be in charge of this country, and trust me, those people earned their money being crooks, and still earn their money being crooks.
So lets not pretend any other way different.
I don't understand what this has to do with the minimum wage.
I don't think people understand that a worker costs far more than their hourly wage. You have to pay workers compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, you have to employ an accountant to navigate the payroll tax withholding issues, and you need to buy umbrella insurance to protect workers from taking your home if they sue you. When its all said and done, a $10/hour employee costs closer to $20/hour, and that's assuming they don't have any benefits. Throw in a health care, sick leave, or retirement benefit, and a $10/hour employee is costing $30/hour. Using a conservative estimate of $2.00 per square foot for a commercial lease a modest 1000 square foot store costs $3500/month after taxes and utilities. Add three workers making $10/hour (real cost $20 per hour) 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and your labor costs are over $21,000 a month. Your tiny store costs a minimum of $25,000 a month to keep open, and that doesn't include buying inventory, advertising, landscaping, shoplifting losses etc and your biggest cost is labor. Let's say your selling jeans and you make $5 per pair of jeans, you need to sell 5,000 pairs of jeans each month just to keep your doors open.
Minimum wage isn't a "living wage", nor was it intended to be. As a former employer paying part-time workers only $10/hour I didn't have any illusions that the workers could live off it. It was a second job or "fun money" for all of them and they worked in our store because they wanted to. My wife and I initially worked for free, then later we paid to work there, and then we closed the store and laid them all off. Paying the workers $10/hour wasn't sustainable. Cutting those checks on the months when we only broke even was painful, cutting them on the months when we lost money even more so.
I've been on both sides of the minimum wage issue. I've been the employee making minimum wage, and I've been the employer paying it (well, over it but just barely). I've been the employer dipping into my savings so that I could pay it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the 1%. Until you're working for free and deciding which bills you aren't going to pay that month so that you can pay your employees on time, you'll probably never understand.