Minimum wage.

Which of the following best describes your positon on a minimum wage.

I used $7-8 dollars because that seems to be the most discussed and most realistic number.

$8/hour, I would also support a tax of 100% on income over a million-per-year (an effective maximum wage.)

From 51-64 the top tax rate was 91%. Those were generally boom years. From 1932 - 1986, the top tax rate was above 50%. The last time (since 1917) that the top tax rate was under 40% for an extended period of time we had the Great Depression.

Since globalization is sending most of the money, since around the time of the Vietnam War, overseas to avoid taxation.

www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm

Also, since this ultimately gets to concentration of wealth, please read Kevin Phillips' Wealth and Democracy. Any economic empire ends up undermining itself through overconcentration of wealth into the hands of a few. He uses Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and now ourselves the US as examples.

"Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year’s percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning."

With the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 and 1/2 percent, mostly those individuals and companies making over $3 million per yr, we have a very top heavy system. Offshored money going untaxed here ultimately is loading up the tax burden of, you guessed it, the middle class which is going extinct.

there are lots of people in our society with real needs.

for getting rich. Im all for tax reform especially when it comes to unearned income, but 100% is a tad ridiculous.

million-per-year, my heart won't bleed for them.

....penalize people for getting rich, who will?....how much money is too much?....how much healthcare is too little?....would the average American have a greater chance of earning millions or suffering without healthcare in his/her lifetime?....if people like me had a millions then a loaf of bread would cost thousands....

....securing the fortune and weeping for the rich few who take billions out of our communal pocket while millions go without healthcare and die, is going to end....and I bet Mark Warner won't help end it either....by the way, the minimum wage should be $14-$15 dollars an hour if you want to EAT and pay the rent and utilities....

for hundreds of years now, turnabout would be fair play, but it will never happen because controlling the government = being rich. If we overthrew it we'd just end up like Mexico, with a "revolutionary" elite.

The poor and the middle class are being worked over by the CEO and 'connected' classes. Gated communities and insulating themselves with greenbacks won't protect them when it all comes crashing down.

Madame DeFarge is knitting right now.

Something has got to put the brakes on the legalized embezzlement going on in the executive suites of most big corporations.

A progressive tax put the brakes on naked greed for a very long time.

...Europe to escape it, just as the Europeans now move here to escape their own high taxes.

I think we need social programs and to care for the poor and those less fortunate, but I don't think we need to gut the wealthy, either. We just need to get them to pay their fair share. Fair share, not everything they own. It would be counterproductive.

Just as I don't support THEM being unfair to me, I don't support US being unfair to them.

If you expect the minimum wage to be a living wage, it would need to be a minimum salary of about 40K or more, depending on where you live, and that is just not feasible.

because even if the company paying it provides health insurance, nobody making that kind of money will be able to afford the copays for health care. Also off the list will be any hope of saving for retirement.

$7-$8 is the number most people use because that's what most fast food jobs in urban areas have been paying for a long time.

Consider that in 1954, the minimum wage was designed to support a family of four on a thrifty (not poverty level) budget.

Consider that now, even that "generous" $7/hour won't buy a one bedroom apartment and many necessities of life.

The GOP never wants to talk about it on the house floor. The main reason they want the immigrants to come here to do jobs that junior tells us that we don't want, for five dollars a day!!

Americans forgot Cesar Chavez that organized the Farm Workers, that got a fair wage for the workers. Guess who didn't like that union? Guess who broke up that Union? Something you'll never hear that goddamn Lou Dobbs talk about.

And, seriously, out of curiosity, why?

Then make cities that don't pass a living wage ordinance have to enact rent control. For instance Apartment complexes could not charge for one bedroom more than one weeks pay at minimum wage. Utilities would have to prorate their charbges. Progressive stuff.

In big cities like NY (where I live) rent control is a relic that has been gradually fazed out (almost entirely, at this point). Landlords are too powerful as interests to allow such a plan to happen. And individual homeowners would also protest since they've already paid sky-high prices for their property (take a look at corcoran.com, just for fun) and would take a serious hit. So the only places left would be housing projects.

I think a better plan is simply to require each locality to pass a REAL living wage that takes into account the costs of living particular to each area, while maintaining a "floor" wage so that less expensive cities can't get away with a sham ordinance.

I would triple the minimum wage immediately, as that would be barely enough to live on, and go back to the system not really followed since the 1950s, of heavier taxes on rich people and the majority of taxes paid by corporations, not individuals (read the "America: What Went Wrong?" books and general reporting of Barlett and Steele, etc.). I would also enact a law, if possible, forcing corporations with more than 20 (just to give an example) employees--that is, able to do it--to set aside a pension paid for by the employer, not the employee, and untouchable, even by corporate "bankruptcy" declarations. Even if the pension were a very small amount, it could still supplement Social Security, as the workers who get minimum wage over a lifetime, the most underpaid people of all, with no benefits generally, need it most. (No minimum wage job has a pension that I know of.) Tax the rich, help the middle class and poor--the way they used to do it, a couple of generations ago.

Corporations don't pay taxes, their consumers do.
They may pay the actual dollars on taxable profits, but we still absorb the cost passed on to us as consumers.

Basic economics 101

and all their litigation. Patents, copyrights, lawsuits against each other, etc.

They're not paying their fair share.

"Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year’s percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning."

Warren Buffet in a commondreams article I posted above.

It doesn't matter how much taxes corp pay. All costs of taxes are build into the cost of their products. The consumers pay it by the corp passing the cost of the tax to us.

guess who pays the 'difference' ? Everybody else. That money offshored now goes into creating lower paying jobs offshore along with bank accounts overseas, too. You certainly sound like you've taken an economics course or two so you must be aware of 'multiplier effects', which was MY point (which I think you missed).

The current system of offshoring capital and jobs is unsustainable unless the jobs created overseas equate with the lost purchasing power of the US jobs lost to 'outsourcing'. Most new jobs created by those laid-off by outsourcing, I can assure you, are not making the same or better wage levels.

Please read The End of Work--The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin
http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/art/rifkin01.htm

Wealth and Democracy-A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips
http://www.wealthanddemocracy.com/general.htm

and any kind of research on Keynesian economics. If the 'pie' is shrinking for consumers in the US-- with an economy that makes up around $12 trillion of the world's $36 trillion total GDP, with consumption accounting for 75% of that $12 trillion in the US--and Republicans continuing to give the wealthiest 1 and 1/2 percent the lion's share of tax cuts, the economy will stagnate, which is what is happening right now.

Foreign consumption is NOT making up for the lost US consumption, be it by corruption overseas or just that the wages being paid overseas isn't really going to the workers. The much ballyhooed Asian savings figures of around 35-40% are probably erroneous. Those are probably 'enforced' savings, as The Race To The Bottom, by Alan Tonelson, shows us.

Profits realised overseas but rewarding investors who again turn around and re-invest offshore (adding to the vicious cycle) simply make the lower and middle classes in the United States, and elsewhere where this type of economics is practiced, disappear.

You can have great wealth or a democracy, but you cannot have both--Louis Brandeis, probably thinking about corporate welfare I suppose during the Great Depression.

people to be creative and not be slaves to one type of job.

Get stuck in a rut and you kill only yourself. That's inhumane. And inhuman.

6.50 or 7.00 an hour might provide a decent standard of living if combined with guaranteed comprehensive health benefits, quality education and other means to move up, good public transit, and better urban planning which would integrate the working poor into mixed-class communities in an affordable way.

Edit: But obviously, what we have sucks, and our nation is run by clowns.

It is an artificial barometer set to pay the lowest wage a young unskilled new worker/hire gets paid.

Set it at $100.00 an hr and eventually that will be the lowest wage employers pay. Of course your burger meal will cost $50.00 It is all relative

If wages are set at all, minimum wages should be indexed based on cost of living. The same $7.00 an hour in New York City does not equal $7.00 in Small-ville

As for you living wage proponents. I want a living wage equal to Bill Gates. It's only fair. Right?

If someone gets to decide on what I need to live on, I get to decide on who I want to live like

Why the minimum wage in my state is $7.25 an hour, yet the price for products in the chains are exactly the same as the price they are online which is exactly the same as they are when I visit states with $5.15 minimum wages. Why is that if the cost of labor still has so much to do with the cost of goods sold?

other cost factors apply. W/C insurance may be lower in the state that pays the $7.15 min wage. Fuel may be less expensive to ship the product to each location even within states. The variables are almost endless. I find it odd that stores would charge the same price online as in the brick and mortar stores as it is normally less costly to shop online unless the retailer prefers you to walk into their store to shop and be influenced to buy other merchandise.

As for why does "the cost of labor still has so much to do with the cost of goods sold" It's called margin. Each item in the store has to have a certain margin, normally between 20% and 60 % of the cost of the item, for the store to break even. The item may cost $2.00 to buy, but after you add on overhead cost, wages, benefits, etc. you have to sell it for $4.00
Budget line items that are normally called fixed and variable expenses. The $2.00 item may cost the store to buy and $2.00 to borrow the money to buy it, ship it, pay the stocker, pay the store utilities, insure the worker and building, pay the cashier to handle it, the advertisement to promote it, the bag to carry it. To break even may be $4.00 Anything above that is profit.

Wages typically are about 15% to 25% of the total cost to sell an item. If you can save 10% on the wage cost of an item you and you competitor buys at the same price that gives you an advantage.

It is hard to believe, but most retailers actually only make 1.0 to 5.0 cents on the each dollar per item after they pay all the costs associated with selling an item. There are exceptions to that, like big ticket items

Our gas is among the most expensive in the nation, as is our insurance. It's Oregon for heaven's sake. Check the chains yourself. Prices are prices are prices and they don't vary from state to state, except for sales and the like.

The old economic rules simply do not apply anymore. There is a base of cost that any business has to consider, obviously. But retail price is all about what the market will bear. New product? Roll it out high and appeal to the ego and the razzle dazzle of having what nobody else has. Keep it high as long as possible, then gradually roll it into a price that the 60% can afford. If you possibly can, make a bare bones version for the other 40%, otherwise, fuck 'em. Most importantly, watch the stock values because that's all that really matters anymore. It's a leisure class economy. Investors and those who serve them and nothing more.

Especially if we keep believing that low wages is the key ingredient to low prices.

Gas is heavily regulated and taxed by local and state governments. Also federal regs require several hundred different mixtures of fuel depending on where you live and population levels. The gas may cost the same relatively speaking out of the tanker at the dock, but once you get out of the gate, there are several variables that will affect the price way before you pump it in your car.

"low wages is the key ingredient to low prices" is a straw man arguments. Quality of the product and the service that it requires are a lot more important to whether low prices than wages ever will be.

Spin spin spin. Why are Nikes and Payless shoes both made in foreign factories, but Nikes are 10 times the price? No, it isn't all quality and service either. You must have a boatload of money wrapped up in the stock market or you wouldn't be buying into this bullshit. That or you're desperately hoping all this economic bullshit is true so you can have a boatload of money in the stock market some day. Guess what, you don't have to buy into the bullshit to put money in the stock market. One isn't contingent on the other.

all together. Local conditions should dictate wages

I think the minimum wage artificially keeps wages lower for working class people.

I see no problem at all paying a high school kid $4.00 an hour for a summer job and $10.00 an hour to an adult with two mouths to feed and will most likely stick around for ten years verses three months.

They 'need' to ever reduce costs in order to increase profits, because it increases the value of the corporation. I don't particularly like it, but it's what they do. That's why they out-source to countries like China where laborers make like $1 a day. One dollar may buy you more in China then it does in the US, but it still is way below the poverty line.

And just how local are the conditions when for instance Wall-Mart is involved? A Wall-Mart store is at a location, the laborers may be local, but Wall-Mart itself is hardly local, it's global. The profits of the store don't benefit anyone in the local community, but the owners and stock holders of Wall-Mart elsewhere. That's how Wall-Mart sucks local economies dry. So much for local conditions.

Local conditions are reflected in their pay structure. Wal-Mart may be global in scope, but they don't import cheap labor from china to work their stores, at least not yet, :) If good labor is scarce, they pay more, sometimes better than local stores to get the better help.

As for Wal-Mart profits not benefiting the community, everyone that have a 401 (K) or a mutual fund owns a piece of Wal-Mart.

I know it's almost sacrosanct to bash Wal-Mart around here but they are probably just about the most generous corp player around when it comes to the local communities. That's a fact and they do it for good PR reasons

As with almost any type of change, there are both good and bad aspects to it. Wal-Mart changed the retail world, the financial world in general, and small town USA forever for good and for bad.

http://forum.truthout.org/blog/story/2005/10/5/151215/711

right now, it's only a one year 'experiment', but it should be made permanent and the rate even raised !!!!

Then the monies collected should be distributed to states just like the old Nixon 'revenue-sharing' system worked.

It's one thing to have enough income to make a decent living, it's another thing to make several thousand times as much.

Simply claiming that you "need" a Bill Gates-like income to make a decent living isn't very convincing.

What is it with these people who always want the bigger slice of the pie?

Who determines what a living wage is??? Do you or I??? The government?

We have equal employment skills, if you have three kids and I have one, do you deserve more wages because you decided to have two more kids??? Is that fair to me because I decided to restrain myself from the joy of children because my skills and income would be strained to raise them, but you didn't?

If you invent the next greatest mouse trap and can make millions of dollars and literally make 100,000 x the living wage to spend as you see fit. Should you be limited in your philanthropic desires. lets say you want to give away your next billion dollars to cure cancer, would you want the bigger slice of pie?

Is it not according to the living standards of the developed world to be able to afford a decent home, and things such as electricity and clean water, groceries, education, health care and transportation?

I'm aiming for a decent bare minimum that a majority of people would agree on. I think that's possible, going on the assumption that only a minority wants the opportunity to take the bigger slice of the pie.


So far i've only heard very few people say that everyone is selfish.

$6-7 teen wage, indexed to inflation. The only reason I support a bit more for teens is because $5 isn't enough to save up for college, the way kids used to be able to do. At least better than they are today.

A ballot proposal in Michigan could raise it to $7.15 next year.

which doesn't pay enough to live on, then the terms of employment are inherently exploitative, and the situation is a clear failure of the market. In a well run market economy, it's the job of the government to remedy such failures, so we damn well better have adequate minimum wage laws as well as an earned income tax credit.

is no longer a reasonable wage.

I could support a compromise that included a time limited training wage for teens under 17 perhaps. Maybe 6 to 8 weeks training wage and then up to full minimum wage. I understand "the logic" behind the "training wage" but it is always abused. Maxing out training at 8 weeks gives employers enough incentive to hire a teen for the Summer only, which is the example everyone likes to use for breaking teens into the work force.

You want them to work longer than for Summer break, then pay them the same as you would anyone else, and stop undercutting people who have to support themselves or a family with minimum wage jobs. After 8 weeks either someone is fully trained, or they have a pretty complex job that deserves to be compensated for at well above minimum wage anyway.