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According to a piece of info I have, if USA minimum wage had kept pace with CEO salaries up to 2001, the minimum wage would have been.....
$25.50 per hour.
Jaw-dropping, huh?
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Wow. You ain't lyin'.
(Just reminded me that my first fulltime job in 1979 paid the princely sum of $3.14/hr.)
Sounds like what I earned on my paper route.
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According to a piece of info I have, if USA minimum wage had kept pace with CEO salaries up to 2001, the minimum wage would have been.....
$25.50 per hour.
Jaw-dropping, huh?
No.
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According to a piece of info I have, if USA minimum wage had kept pace with CEO salaries up to 2001, the minimum wage would have been.....
$25.50 per hour.
Jaw-dropping, huh?
No.
You've attracted the "Wealth makes Might makes Right" segment of the board. Enjoy!
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There some terrible class warefare on display here and some general confusion. If this stuff had been taught properly, I and others wouldn't have to address it, but here we are.
You know, there are so many ways I could open this and each has its own merits but I think perhaps some basics are needed:
You [each person reading this], I, and everybody else in America, are not the same. We are all different.
Each of us at our respective jobs, earns money for what we do and skill level present.
Not every business is the same. Not ever business makes the same profit. Not every business has the same expenses.
It's ridiculous I have to explain this, but again, here I am.
An entry-level job with little to no skill set is not equivilant to a CEO (regardless of level of skill or what you personally may think -- it's not your call; if you don't like that, buy out the company you disagree with, and pay yourself less than everybody else).
A worker gets paid minimum wage for a myriad of reasons, including but not necessarily lmited to:
- The worker does not have the knowledge of skills to perform the job properly and draw in more and continued business and therefore is not worth more money. This has nothing to do with your heart or what ever financial excuse you got.
- The job is entry-level and the employee will move up. How many teenagers who started at minimum wage do you know that are still there and at that entry-level job years later?
- It's all the job can afford to start somebody out at.
It's conviently overlooked in the arguement for higher minimum wage that people do not stay at minimum wage; they get raises, they get promoted into a job that pays more; they move on to another job where it pays more.
And what is "fair" for minimum wage? $10.00 an hour? $20.00 an hour? $25.00 an hour? Why not $50.00 an hour? Some of you may go, "Well, fifty is too much".
OHHH!!! It's too much? Well, says you. Maybe the other guy who says $20.00 an hour, thinks $25.00 an hour is too much. Which one of you is right? Neither. It's not your money and you don't keep the books.
Let's pick a high minimum wage number, say what another user posted, of $25.00 an hour. Now, this is not about the user in question, but rather anybody who suggests any minimum wage higher the current level.
So, who are these employers who can afford to pay it? How do we know they can? Let's go back to the basics:
Not every business is the same. Not ever business makes the same profit. Not every business has the same expenses.
Is the K-Mart corporation that has about 22,000 emplyees nationwide and a little over $15 billion in profit the same as the Chick-Fil-A company that has 33,000 employees and approximately $210 million in profit? One company has more employees yet les profit. One company has more chains than the other yet less employees.
Is the Dollar General store chain nearest you the same as the nearest Wal-Mart?
Can a blanket statement that all businesses can afford to pay $25.00 an hour, be accurate? Of course not. This is like chasing rainbows on a unicorn -- it sounds pretty but it's unrealistic.
And who are these employees that are getting $25.00 an hour now?
Is the employee who folds cloths and assists costumers at the GAP the same as the factory worker who makes cloths and works many hours a day? No, of course not. Yet the GAP employee likely now make more an hour than the factory worker, and in some cases, doctors with over a decade of experience.
So what of these people who make more for their skill set? The doctor who makes upwards of $30.00 an hour, the mechanic who makes more than $25.00 an hour (especially considering the businesses and type of work performed)? Do they now get more money an hour? Why not?
Does the mechanic who's been out in the hot open garage, getting his body dirty, smelling oils and chemicals, rolling around on the ground, listening to loud noises and working like a dog from early morning to 5:00 or later not deserve more than say thye employee with little to no skills who works outside at a carwash for $8.00 an hour? Yes he does, but now that person washing you car, when they aren't texting or chatting with their friends, makes $25.00 an hour.
If you made $25.00 an hour cleaning hotels rooms, why would you move up? Why would you advance?
Aside from your lack of skill, a minimum wage paying job is also a step in learning to work for a living, learning a craft, make connections, learning how to interact with people in a business environment. These aren't meant to be high-paying cakewalks. You aren't meant to love your job. A business doesn't employ you because it wants to help a comunity make a living -- that is a byproduct that is hoped for. A business is in business to make money. Some guy or gal that started out, more often than not, at minimum wage hated their job and wanted to be rich. And they made that dream a reality.
But let's not gloss over the fact that it's minimum wage that's being addressed here - it's once again conveniently glossed over that there are other jobs that go over minimum wage. Yes, I've already stated some. Doctors, mechanics, factory workers. Hell, the night cleaners at McDonald's, in my county, make $10.00 an hour to clean the place after closing.
In fact, MOST jobs pay more than minimum wage. The resturaunts here on the beach during the tourists months, still pay the the fraction an hour that the government let's them pay their employees, but that's because of tipping. You can make easily over a $100 a night with tips and if you man a bar and run it great, you can make a load in one night. And a bag boy who carriers out a person's grocery bags at a store for minimum wage, gets tipped (Even if the palce doesn't allow them to take tips).
I'm starting to get int othe weeds, so I need to switch gears to the major point:
IT'S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS. I know, you don't like that. I know, it probably pisses you off.
But it's NOT your money. You didn't earn it. It's not your place to tell somebody else how much to pay somebody else. And it's certainly not any of your place to tell the government to place their foot upon somebody and force them by law to pay more.
You don't like that, open your own business, gow it into a national chain, and pay all your employees a minimum wage of $25.00 an hour. Then come back here and brag about it. Show us by example.
And guess what? So what if they have a lot of profit? So what if they could afford to pay somebody $25.00 an hour? It's not your money, it's their's and they can spend it however they damn well please. Maybe it didn't occur to you, but maybe this CEO earned it; throw away this garbage TV and movie image of a big fat white guy sitting behind a chair smoking a cigar and doing nothing while yelling at his secretary and occassionally banging her.
CEO's can be men, women, black, white, fat, thin. And guess what? Maybe he worked his ass off; he works from early morning to late at night every day, have little to know private life and misses birthdays and family, works hard and may even hate what he or she does.
Don't envy and covet somebody's else's money.
I think that covers most of what needed to be said, but I'll throw in some math to hit the point home (and a little more commentary).
Let's take K-Mart and $25.00 an hour, with a profit of $15+ billion.
Let's say an employee works an average of six hours a day at five days a week. $750 a week. Time four = 3,000 a month. Times twelve = $36,000 a year.
36,000 x 22,000 employees = $792,000,000 million.
K-Mart doesn't bring that much in, in a year. I nfact, they've been loosing money the last few years and are in the whole. Only when combined with Sears do they show some profit.
So, they'd have to go into the company's over all profit. You run out of cash. You don't have cash to make upgrades, open to locations, open new warehouses, etc.
But this is company with over a thousand locations nationwide. What of the small companyies and local business that don't have hundreds or thousands of locations of a profit in the billions, or millions, and a yearly gross that is not in the millions?
These places can't afford to pay people $25.00 an hour. And what are you going do? Demand the government use class warefare and demonize companies based upon profit and dictate that those over a certain amount can and shall ay $25.00 an hour? That's what it would take, you know. You want to see the book on the rules for determing that, by geroge just put together the King James Bible and War & Peace, then multiply it by two. And then what if a company decides, "Okay, so the government says if I maek this much and ahve these many employees, I have to pay $25.00 an hour, so I'll keep my staff under that amount and close stores and operating hours until I fall under the Federally mandated line, so I don't have to", huh? Then you have to target them. Then they either shut down or find another way around it or go overseas. Then you target them. Now you've not got enough places that make enough money to pay higher wages. You create a hostile atmosphere where the goverment is scrutinizing what you make and what you do, and you have to have comply. And these employees, they see how it now works. How many of them do you think want to now have a company of their own? Or as Jon Lovitz put it:
"First they say, 'You're dead broke; the United States of America, you can do what ever you want. Go for it!', so then you go for it and then you make it and everybody's like, 'Fuck you!'. What the fuck is that? You just said 'Go for it'!"
And if you don't like how much I wrote, then tough. You're free to read as little or as much as you like. The government isn't forcing you to, though maybe I should ask them to 'cause, well, you know you can read that much.
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Sirusjr, I appreciate a thoughtful reply. As always, I am open, within reason, to have a conversation and not a confrontation.
Justin - You make some good points for sure. I don't know what the minimum wage should be but one thing sticks out at me what I've heard frequently used as an argument for keeping minimum wage low.
These jobs aren't meant to be long term
I'm not saying I disagree with this but it seems to be commonly used as an argument that it doesn't matter how well people are paid for these jobs as it is only temporary. The thing is, not every company has room for advancement in the same way.
While that's true, you got to remember: these jobs aren't meant to be careers. Nobody decides: You know what I want to do for a living? Flip burgers.
You know what I want to do until I die? Operate akiddy amusement park rides.
You move on to another job. Almost nobody stays within the same job they started out with. I can't recall the exact amount, but the typical person until about age 30, will have had somewhere from a dozen to 25 different jobs.
Let's all think back to our first jobs. Remember it? Would you want to have advanced within that company?
My first job was for a crummy southern store chain bagging and carrying out groceries for an A-hole manager. What about you (who ever is reading)?
One type of company that I've noticed lately that does an awesome job with their pay scale is breweries. Small breweries start everyone out on the bottom at low skill jobs and slowly teaches them everything along the way until they become head brewer and either go off and start their own brewery or something else.
But you have to consdier, that is a growing industry. Alcohol, bar another prohibition, isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and as the population increases, the demand rises, and the need for more breweries is called for. People are needed to run and operate it, so you have to advance people and teach them how to do it.
The thing is, minimum wage should have some relationship to cost of living. Meaning, it should be possible for someone to get by on a single full-time minimum-wage job.
But you see, that is entirely subjective. Does the woman who went to medical school for a decade with over $20,000 in debt, two kids, and a big house with a mortgage in a tourist city Florida have the same cost of living as a man who runs a small company, has no kids, rents his house, and lives in Georgia? No -- the cost of living varies on some many things, from state-to-state, and even from city to city.
Again, I hate to go back to what I said so soon, but you've passed over that most jobs pay more than minimum wage. Sometimes not much more, but others -- dollars more.
Since I can only speak for my city, I'll provide some examples:
As previously mentioned, the McDonald's here pay $10.00 an hour for night time cleaners.
The Target on the beach paid something like $10.00 or $11.00 an hour when it opened.
The new Wal-Mart on the beach next to Target, was offering night time stockers over $11.00 an hour. Yes, I know some night time jobs offer higher pay. These examples just popped into my head first.
A local hotels offers it's grounds cleaner (goes around inside and out during the day cleaning) $10.00 an hour.
Some hotels will offer cleaning supervisors over $11.00 an hour. Now, of course this isn't an entry-level job, but it only takes a year or two to get there.
Some of the fast food joints here offer $8.00 or mroe an hour to start.
One of the car wash places that uses real people, starts at $8.00 an hour, then you can get tips, too.
I've also seen other entry level jobs that start at $10.00 an hour or so, in the papers and Workforce Center online listings.
An entry-level job delivering mail for the Post Office, where you need nothing more than to pass a memory and I.Q. test, starts out at over $14.00 an hour (not including benfits, something else other glossed over on other jobs).
It's not the employer's job to make sure you can afford to live on one minimum wage job. That's why some folks take two jobs. That's why some folks take as many hours as they can get at minimum wage.
I mean, I don't want -- personally -- to work 50 hours a week at minimum wage, but I've done it. And it was crap, let me tell you. But that was the way to earn it. And I learned the value of a dollar. I can honestly tell you, had that same job started me out at $25.00 an hour, I'd have learned jack friggin' squat about the value of a dollar, and I would have only left after slugging the boss (so, how ever long I would have held out).
I started out at minimum wage, 50 hours (give or take) a week, monthly car payments, high insurance rates since I'm a male, and paying rent to a family member (eventually). It was a bitch. But I did it. And so can other people. And, like I said, these are temporary jobs, a year or two later, not only should you have had a raise or two, you should have most likely moved on to another higher paying job; you shouldn't become settled and complacent so you can afford to live on just that one job. You should be pissed off and want to better yourself and situation. If you're still at that same job five years later and aren't cursing half the people's names and remebering angry costumers, you're an odd duck, let me tell ya that.
The situation in California, well, I can't get into that -- it's politcal. Suffice to say, elections have consequences.
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I'll take your word. I only know a handful of medical people and only one spoke about the debt, and other examples I have are from people in that field calling into radio shows talking about it. Maybe it varies from the quality of school, time spent, and field in the industry entered.
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