01-22-2019, 12:54 PM
When I was a kid, minimum wage had no correlation to "living wage". We were living with our parents and were willing to accept a lower wage in exchange for work experience.
Sort of how our legislators who push their leftist agendas have unpaid interns. The "living wage" doesn't apply to them as employers because their interns don't really need to pay back their college loans as long as they aren't making any money. (?)
There are a lot of people in situations who don't need to earn a large enough income to raise a household on. Many of them just need extra cash for weed (or whatever) or are looking for work experience. Sort of like the unpaid interns that only the "elite" think they should have access to.
But what do I know... here's a Nobel prize recipient's take on it:
"The minimum wage law requires employers to discriminate against persons with low skills. No one describes it that way, but that is in fact what it is. Take a poorly educated teenager with little skill whose services are worth, say, only $2.00 an hour (in 1979). He or she might be eager to work for that wage in order to acquire greater skills that would permit a better job. The law says that such a person may be hired only if the employer is willing to pay him or her (in 1979) $2.90 an hour. Unless an employer is willing to add 90 cents in charity to the $2.00 that the person’s services are worth, the teenager will not be employed. It has always been a mystery to us why a young person is better off unemployed from a job that would pay $2.90 an hour than employed at a job that does pay $2.00 an hour."
-Milton Friedman, (1976 Nobel Prize recipient)
In other words, the "real" minimum wage is zero: The amount of money a business is willing to pay a potential employee when the minimum wage is $15 but the candidate has a $10/hour skill set.
I don't approach this topic pedantically. We have had small businesses over the years that paid employees hourly wages (all above minimum wage, by the way, meanwhile as owners we were sometimes paid nothing). If they institute "living wages" when "minimum wages" will do, the small businesses least able to provide the "charity" Friedman talked about above will close down, and the large corporations like Walmart will replace their footprint. Small businesses aren't greedy, in fact many small business owners make less money than their employees. People forget that whatever the wage is, the out-of-pocket cost is way more than that. After factoring all the various taxes and insurances, a $10/hour employee costs the business $20/hour, a $15/hour employee cost $30, etc.
Sort of how our legislators who push their leftist agendas have unpaid interns. The "living wage" doesn't apply to them as employers because their interns don't really need to pay back their college loans as long as they aren't making any money. (?)
There are a lot of people in situations who don't need to earn a large enough income to raise a household on. Many of them just need extra cash for weed (or whatever) or are looking for work experience. Sort of like the unpaid interns that only the "elite" think they should have access to.
But what do I know... here's a Nobel prize recipient's take on it:
"The minimum wage law requires employers to discriminate against persons with low skills. No one describes it that way, but that is in fact what it is. Take a poorly educated teenager with little skill whose services are worth, say, only $2.00 an hour (in 1979). He or she might be eager to work for that wage in order to acquire greater skills that would permit a better job. The law says that such a person may be hired only if the employer is willing to pay him or her (in 1979) $2.90 an hour. Unless an employer is willing to add 90 cents in charity to the $2.00 that the person’s services are worth, the teenager will not be employed. It has always been a mystery to us why a young person is better off unemployed from a job that would pay $2.90 an hour than employed at a job that does pay $2.00 an hour."
-Milton Friedman, (1976 Nobel Prize recipient)
In other words, the "real" minimum wage is zero: The amount of money a business is willing to pay a potential employee when the minimum wage is $15 but the candidate has a $10/hour skill set.
I don't approach this topic pedantically. We have had small businesses over the years that paid employees hourly wages (all above minimum wage, by the way, meanwhile as owners we were sometimes paid nothing). If they institute "living wages" when "minimum wages" will do, the small businesses least able to provide the "charity" Friedman talked about above will close down, and the large corporations like Walmart will replace their footprint. Small businesses aren't greedy, in fact many small business owners make less money than their employees. People forget that whatever the wage is, the out-of-pocket cost is way more than that. After factoring all the various taxes and insurances, a $10/hour employee costs the business $20/hour, a $15/hour employee cost $30, etc.