Are high minimum wages ethical?

You do realize that your experiences are by no means universal, I hope.

The E wrote:You do realize that your experiences are by no means universal, I hope.

You mean like somebody working at a convenience store who won't get off the cellphone to do her job when she is at work. Leaving me waiting for 5 minutes to buy a couple of items.

Or perhaps the guy at the electronics store too busy talking to his fellow "sales associates" to get me the simple mini sd card I wanted. It was alright I knew the guy at Radio Shack who owns would hook me up at twice the price. Guess who got my business.

Did you mean ...

Amazingly enough when I stop at a gas station in nowhere South Dakota a woman drops everything she is doing to help me out. Including making phone calls to find me a place to camp that will get her no money. Coldest part of last year's trip. Of course I bought lots of extra stuff because of it. I felt too guilty for her taking all that time so that I had a place to sleep in the middle of rainy very windy weather.

Having traveled through much of this country including, eek, CA amazing how the denser the population is the less they are willing to do. Heck less willing to even admit you are a fellow human.

So I guess it isn't universal. Just like back in 2009 when there were NO jobs to be had yet every time I looked around there were help wanted signs. But it was beneath them to accept it.

For that matter Mike Rowe just recently quoted the BLS about another 5.6 million jobs that are going unfulfilled in this country right now. What was the job participation rate?

So yes I would call it pretty universal in the suburban to urban areas of the US. In my pretty well traveled opinion. Rural quite a bit different.

Still not saying that welfare should go away. But it has been and continues to be abused. Then again so has the H1B visas by corporations. No they don't balance out. tow wrongs are still 2 wrongs.

[Edit] Big thing to remember is at 5% we are talking about 1 in 20 people looking for a job. and the other 35+% that aren't even looking just happy to get along. Which does include me.

Why should I work? I have everything I need and have money to do silly stuff that occurs to me. of course 20 years ago I was planning all this. "People don't plan to fail. They fail to plan."[End Edit]

Which doesn't apply to many here on the forums actually.

T2M

T2M,

Your post reminded me of the time I spent working on a year long contract in Jakarta. I recall a scene that haunts me to this day. It was at first blush pretty prosaic, yet it disturbs me still.

The scene was that of a man wading across a hip deep brown creek running through his neighborhood alley. I saw this in passing as I drove by on my way from one modern high rise to another for a business meeting. That brown creek was of course an open sewer. That such poverty can reside beside first world wealth and modern amenities still haunts me.

I agree, I don't want to eliminate all welfare. Making sure our countrymen never experience that sort of poverty is worth a higher level of taxes. On the other hand any time anyone in America complains about hunger and poverty, I want to gag.

Your comment reminds me of when I was a newish staff member at a government employment agency in 1981.
We got a call from the local piggery (that was the biggest in the southern hemisphere at the time). Their ultra modern pig crap extraction system had broken down (basically the pens on grates to large open concrete drains to pumps). The crap from 10s of thousands of pigs was building up and could we find some labourers to stand waist deep shovelling. Within a few hours we had ten, who worked hard and got paid accordingly.
Most people want to work, some can't because of various (mainly health) problems, and some won't (usually back problems, can't get it off the mattress).

I do agree PeterZ that people in developed western countries don't know real poverty and deprivation.

In the UK, the Labour Party is regarded by many as being the primary proponent of Welfarism. This isn't because they are keen protectors of human rights (Corbyn seems to be doing a nudge-nudge-wink-wink on anti-semitism and terrorism given his choice of London Mayor candidate), it's because historically, a high proportion of people on welfare (75%+) tended to vote Labour. Therefore, by getting more people dependent on government handouts, they would increase their own share of the vote.

Welfare in the UK was originally created as a safety net and the original architects would be horrified to see it as it is today, as a lifestyle choice. They were firm believers in the concept that people should be able to stand on their own (financial) feet with all the dignity that financial independence brings. This is in contrast to today where welfare is seen (unjustly, in a great many cases) as being for those who don't want to work but still want to live in relative luxury.

The concept of high minimum wages is one of those things that from a moral viewpoint, seems fantastic. The problem arises when trying to turn that into reality. The higher the wage is jacked, the more people will end up on welfare due to the business owners not wanting to spend more than they have to. It can also lead to sexual discrimination. Once the maternity leave costs are added in, many employers will note that it is financially less profitable to hire women because they can become pregnant, needing time off that has to be covered by temporary staff, thus costing even more.

However, should the concept of the minimum wage be abandoned, there are those business owners who would love to pay a pound an hour or less in wages, trusting the government to make up the difference between what they want to pay and the amount of pay needed for a person to live on.

In short, this is yet another one of those concepts that, due to the complex nature of the real world, cannot be easily solved.
Life isn't neat and tidy. A simple answer means the question is probably not understood.

Daryl wrote:Your comment reminds me of when I was a newish staff member at a government employment agency in 1981.
We got a call from the local piggery (that was the biggest in the southern hemisphere at the time). Their ultra modern pig crap extraction system had broken down (basically the pens on grates to large open concrete drains to pumps). The crap from 10s of thousands of pigs was building up and could we find some labourers to stand waist deep shovelling. Within a few hours we had ten, who worked hard and got paid accordingly.
Most people want to work, some can't because of various (mainly health) problems, and some won't (usually back problems, can't get it off the mattress).

I do agree PeterZ that people in developed western countries don't know real poverty and deprivation.

Daryl contrast and compare with Alabama farmers not able to get the harvest in 2010. That was when Alabama was trying to tighten up on the illegal alien problem.

Funny, in the summer of 1981 was when I was pitching them ~1,500 hale bales a day in that nice comfortable hay barn.

Oh, definitely agree on "less advantaged" countries views of both you and PeterZ. Too many people in the US have no clue. Which is a classic living in a bubble problem actually.

Have fun,
T2M

In our country raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour what is commonly referred to as a living wage would be detrimental to our economy in the long run and would make more people not less dependent on the government. Here is the logic behind that statement.

Imagine that you are a small or medium sized business (In America most people are employed by such companies.) now the majority of your people make minimum wage and you are doing alright your company is making about 2-3% profit each year. Now the government is telling you that now you have to pay your people more for the same low skilled work, to try and keep the company’s profit margin so you can keep the company going (and to keep the majority of your people employed.) your are going to probably do two things first each year the wage goes up you are going to lay off a couple of your low skilled workers to help offset the cost of the new wage, second to minimize the number of people you have to lay off you are going to raise the price of your goods and or services. Now if this is happening regionally or nationally the value of the dollar has gone down affecting every one where this is occurring. There for you are not only hurting the people who are going to be laid off but now you are hurting the middle class family’s because their wage is not increasing but the cost of the goods and services they buy are going up. So the net effect to the economy is negative.

And some companies might just close up shop in the USA and produce their goods somewhere else laying off more people (not that wage would be the only factor in that decision cost of doing business here is expensive.)

And here is the plane simple truth a minimum wage job is not meant to be a carrier or to raise a family on they are meant for entry level worker with little to no skills i.e. Students or even retired people that are bored or just want to supplement their income.

If one truly wants to help these low or no skill workers then we need to start in the schools and with the family. We need to bring back shop class and the Auto work shop. Have robot building challenges (like my High school) and we need not only to encourage college but also trade schools and even the military. There is no one size fits all answer because we are all individuals, College is not for everyone neither is the military but there are so many other options out there that are not brought up in school that should be.

But another cause of this would be to potentially increase the voting base of a particular political party. Making this move even gradually will increase the number of people on long term welfare. And how are those people going to vote? Are they going to vote for the party that will make it difficult for them to stay on the system and there for in a way encourage them to get the education, skill and or trade so they don’t end up on the street or for the party that wants to increase their welfare benefits and make life easier on them.

Just like with everything in life there needs to be a balance between a Company and its employee’s, Republican and Democrat and even husband and wife. When there is a significant unbalance between any two groups it will lead to corruption it’s just human nature.

A minimum wage job, worked for a 40 hour week, should be enough to live on. Including a family.
It's that simple. Or it should be.

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

Annachie wrote:A minimum wage job, worked for a 40 hour week, should be enough to live on. Including a family.
It's that simple. Or it should be.

Sent from my SM-G920I using Tapatalk

I disagree.

Worked 30-105 hours(farm work what can you say) over the summer way back in the 80's. But I was a summer kid earning his spending money. Why should an employer pay somebody more than he is worth to learn? Some do like that farm "corporation" I worked for. Third year I worked there I might have been worth what he paid me. But by then I was working different jobs around and did them faster and better.

Which was way more than the US Navy paid me 3 years later.

The mechanics and more knowledgeable people worked generally something like 60-105. Somebody had to fix all the stuff I broke or broke itself through use more often. Lots of things need to get done that there just are not enough hours of sunlight for. Rainy summer days on a cash crop farm are a blessing and a curse.

Amazingly enough all of them had families and got paid a hell of a lot more per hour! Well except that high school teacher working for his retirement. He pretty much worked about the same as me. He did get paid more and did different jobs because he was more than a strong back.

Have fun,
T2M

It must be great to live in a world like yours, ttm. Where noone is ever forced to take a dead-end job and opportunities are always available to everyone.