Minimum Wage

stamperben · Feb 20, 2014

MachZer0 said:
Ask the manager at Denny's. Some restaurants today employ tip sharing, a concept I don't like. As far as understanding the tips, I clearly stated that I have worked as a dishwasher for minimum wage ($1.30/hr) and never received a tip and never complained about it.

In the 1960's when you made that hourly rate it was worth over $9/hour in today's money. Of course you didn't complain.

MachZer0 · Feb 20, 2014

stamperben said:
In the 1960's when you made that hourly rate it was worth over $9/hour in today's money. Of course you didn't complain.

Well, it certainly didn't feel like $9/hour

And I certainly never expected it to be a living wage

MikeCarra · Feb 20, 2014

MachZer0 said:
Ask the manager at Denny's.

As far as understanding the tips, I clearly stated that I have worked as a dishwasher for minimum wage ($1.30/hr) and never received a tip and never complained about it.

And as Stamper pointed out to you back in the 1960's when you made that salary it had a HIGHER PURCHASING POWER than the minimum wage does today.

If you don't understand how tips work and you don't understand that TODAY is NOT 1960 and in fact the real-dollar value of the minimum wage adjusted for inflation is worth LESS than it was in the late 1960's then you have opted to not be informed on this topic.

Yet you still talk about it. Why is that?

iluvatar5150 · Feb 20, 2014

stamperben said:
In the 1960's when you made that hourly rate it was worth over $9/hour in today's money. Of course you didn't complain.

Lol.

MachZer0 said:
Well, it certainly didn't feel like $9/hour

When was the last time you made the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $9/hr in 2014 money?

MikeCarra · Feb 20, 2014

MachZer0 said:
Well, it certainly didn't feel like $9/hour

So that should clarify it for you. It is WORSE today.

But it appears you don't even understand "inflation adjustment" or "real dollar" buying power concepts.

And I certainly never expected it to be a living wage

In 1960 you stood a better chance of making a living with whatever minimal skills you had. In the intervening 50 years the manufacturing jobs were offshored and today the middle class (which in 1960 was actually STILL GROWING and whose wages were not yet STAGNATED) is at a stand still.

You say you don't work. Thank God in heaven you got your money while people with minimal skills could still make a good living!

It's not as easy today.

More and more people with many higher level skills than you ARE being forced into minimum wage jobs.

It really sounds like you are completely unaware of the world today. If you were making minimum in 1960 let's assume you were, what 16 then? That puts you at about 70 today (?) You seem to have stopped watching what was going on about 35 years ago or so.

MikeCarra · Feb 20, 2014

MachZer0 said:
Well, it certainly didn't feel like $9/hour

This is among the funniest things I've seen.

stamperben · Feb 20, 2014

MikeCarra said:
This is among the funniest things I've seen.

Hang around for a bit Mike. This place can be hilarious!

MachZer0 · Feb 20, 2014

MikeCarra said:
And as Stamper pointed out to you back in the 1960's when you made that salary it had a HIGHER PURCHASING POWER than the minimum wage does today.

If you don't understand how tips work and you don't understand that TODAY is NOT 1960 and in fact the real-dollar value of the minimum wage adjusted for inflation is worth LESS than it was in the late 1960's then you have opted to not be informed on this topic.

Yet you still talk about it. Why is that?

Stamperben posted an unsourced graph from Wikipedia and overstated his case by inflating the numbers.

MachZer0 · Feb 20, 2014

iluvatar5150 said:
Lol.

When was the last time you made the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $9/hr in 2014 money?

Sorry, but you're allowing others to feed you misinformation. Based on the unsourced chart, my wage was very close to the equivalent of today's minimum wage

MikeCarra · Feb 20, 2014

MachZer0 said:
Sorry, but you're allowing others to feed you misinformation. Based on the unsourced chart, my wage was very close to the equivalent of today's minimum wage

No. No it wasn't. The unsourced chart is something that can be found EXTREMELY easily on just about any simple search on this topic.

If you were making minimum in 1960, ECONOMISTS tell you the minimum wage, relative to the cost of materials and goods at the time had about the same "purchasing power" as $9/hour in 2014.

This is a pretty basic concept in economics and money. It's called "real dollars" or "inflation adjusted value".

MachZer0 · Feb 20, 2014

iluvatar5150 said:
Lol.

When was the last time you made the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $9/hr in 2014 money?

By the way, I started that job in July and in July this year the minimum wage int he same state will be, yup, $9/hour. Apparently there should be no more complaints about people making minimum wage

MachZer0 · Feb 20, 2014

MikeCarra said:
No. No it wasn't. The unsourced chart is something that can be found EXTREMELY easily on just about any simple search on this topic.

If you were making minimum in 1960, ECONOMISTS tell you the minimum wage, relative to the cost of materials and goods at the time had about the same "purchasing power" as $9/hour in 2014.

This is a pretty basic concept in economics and money. It's called "real dollars" or "inflation adjusted value".

And as I noted to someone else, the minimum wage in that state is currently $8/hour which reflects on the chart what my

'buying power" was, despite the miscalculation by Stamperben and will increase this year to $9/hour putting today's minimum wage owner at a greater advantage than I had

ThatRobGuy · Feb 20, 2014

MikeCarra said:
The Sherman Anti Trust act was "bad practice"?

It's fine if it's used properly...however, if being used incorrectly by enforcing anti-monopoly laws on a company that's not a monopoly, then it's bad practice.

You don't build someone else up by knocking someone else down.

For example, if I was playing basketball against Lebron James, tying his feet together and one arm behind his back might make me more competitive against him, however that doesn't mean that it's made me a better basketball player.

This I will agree with. WalMart is working very hard to behave in a monopolistic manner and with their expanse and coverage of the market can make quite onerous requirements of their suppliers (consistent price cuts each year or lose the market altogether...this has driven quite a few American companies either out of business or had to offshore to near slave-labor wage markets). But technically they are not a monopoly.

Define "monopolistic behavior"...

If by that you mean trying to sell more and do more business than their competitors... that should be the goal of every company (if they have any drive for success).

People who demonize this practice apparently want the kind of competition where nobody wins...

Look at how the situation was handled with the Microsoft case
United States v. Microsoft Corp. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As I made reference to earlier, the US made efforts to "tie the feet together" (attempting to force them to share their intellectual property with competitors, etc...)

...it didn't work and offered very little in terms of helping other businesses.

It wasn't until Apple starting making products that people wanted to buy again
that Microsoft was actually challenged competitively.

You don't beat a market giant by cheating, you beat them by coming up with a good idea of your own.

Walmart is in no way unstoppable...

You have to keep in mind, Sears was every bit the giant walmart is today back when walmart was nothing more than a single store in a strip mall.

...much like Walmart overtook Sears, it's very possible that someone could overtake walmart.

Minimum wage, and a decent one, is basically a contract we make with our fellow Americans to say "I will pay you a FAIR wage for your efforts in the assurance that I, too, will get a FAIR WAGE for mine."

It's part of being a society.

Many of us have forgotten that.

Minimum wage isn't about a Fair wage...it's exactly what it's called...a minimum wage... If it was about a Fair wage, then there wouldn't be 200 different occupations that all pay exactly the same, the wage would be different based on the complexity of the job and the rarity of the skill.

MachZer0 · Feb 20, 2014

miniverchivi said:
It's fine if it's used properly...however, if being used incorrectly by enforcing anti-monopoly laws on a company that's not a monopoly, then it's bad practice.

You don't build someone else up by knocking someone else down.

For example, if I was playing basketball against Lebron James, tying his feet together and one arm behind his back might make me more competitive against him, however that doesn't mean that it's made me a better basketball player.

Define "monopolistic behavior"...

If by that you mean trying to sell more and do more business than their competitors... that should be the goal of every company (if they have any drive for success).

People who demonize this practice apparently want the kind of competition where nobody wins...

Look at how the situation was handled with the Microsoft case
United States v. Microsoft Corp. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As I made reference to earlier, the US made efforts to "tie the feet together" (attempting to force them to share their intellectual property with competitors, etc...)

...it didn't work and offered very little in terms of helping other businesses.

It wasn't until Apple starting making products that people wanted to buy again
that Microsoft was actually challenged competitively.

You don't beat a market giant by cheating, you beat them by coming up with a good idea of your own.

Walmart is in no way unstoppable...

You have to keep in mind, Sears was every bit the giant walmart is today back when walmart was nothing more than a single store in a strip mall.

...much like Walmart overtook Sears, it's very possible that someone could overtake walmart.

Minimum wage isn't about a Fair wage...it's exactly what it's called...a minimum wage... If it was about a Fair wage, then there wouldn't be 200 different occupations that all pay exactly the same, the wage would be different based on the complexity of the job and the rarity of the skill.

And the trouble with a Fair Wage is that it is a relative concept. Increase the minimum wage to a Fair Wage, and the understanding if what a Fair Wage is will change in order to keep the issue out front. The reason is that harping about a fair wage is simply a way to "buy votes" from the lower income folks

cow451 · Feb 20, 2014

miniverchivi said:
It's fine if it's used properly...however, if being used incorrectly by enforcing anti-monopoly laws on a company that's not a monopoly, then it's bad practice.

Here's an intersting case (since you used a sports analogy) where a company had a monopoly, was sued, lost.... but won:

While the jury found that the NFL had willfully acquired and maintained a monopolization of professional football, it ruled against the rest of the USFL's claims. It did not find that the NFL controlled or attempted to control the television market. The vital claims were those based on television revenues, and those were the ones that the jury did not accept.

MikeCarra · Feb 20, 2014

MachZer0 said:
By the way, I started that job in July and in July this year the minimum wage int he same state will be, yup, $9/hour. Apparently there should be no more complaints about people making minimum wage

That's assuming that minimum wage kept pace with modern cost of living.

IF that was the case the minimum wage would be higher still.

The point people have been TRYING to make to you is that in the 1960's your minimum wage had the buying power of $9/hour TODAY.

If you had to live on $9/hour TODAY you would still be in a bind. And considering that everyone else's wages as well as the US economic productivity has INCREASED more than that, a person making $9/hour will STILL be behind the 8 ball.

Think about your own situation. You sound like you are retired. YOU get COLAs occasionally in your social security and other government handouts like Medicare. Imagine if the last time you got a cost of living adjustment to your government paycheck was 50 years ago.

Would YOU be happy?

MikeCarra · Feb 20, 2014

miniverchivi said:
You don't build someone else up by knocking someone else down.

Ironically that only seems to work when people complain about the upper crust getting more and more.

Seems to me the working people of the US have been getting HELD DOWN for quite some time.

The middle class wages have stagnated for 30+ years now. Meanwhile the C-suite has seen 100%+ increases in salary.

The stock market is growing to unheard of heights...but only a small group of people enjoy that increase.

So please let's not talk about "knocking someone else down". There is no such thing as a truly free, free market. There's ALWAYS moderators on the excesses.

People who demonize this practice apparently want the kind of competition where nobody wins...

So you think WalMart = more people winning? I don't. I don't like it that at some points in WalMart's history their employees have been the largest single group of users of public aid services which I pay for.

You don't beat a market giant by cheating, you beat them by coming up with a good idea of your own.

Microsoft is a very good example of a worse product with more marketshare. Microsoft, a business started by the purchase of someone else's OS, rebranding it, essentially "stealing" it and leveraging it for an "empire". Followed by various questionable anti-competitive business practices and other forms of "theft" (things that even Apple, arguably did with regards to the GUI and Xerox PARC).

There was LITTLE if anything "free market" about the rise of Microsoft...or Apple for that matter.

Minimum wage isn't about a Fair wage...

In a sense it IS. It is about the fundamental fairness that we, the richest nation on God's Earth, will NOT allow millions of our citizens to be trapped in crushing poverty if we can pay a few more cents for our happy meal.

It is "fair" in that it should attempt to keep the worst poverty at bay.

I did not say anything more deeply than that.

And so what if I was advocating for FAIR wages? Why is THAT a problem?

Personally I think medical doctors, cops and firemen should be paid the most money on the planet. CEO's should get, MAYBE 2X the average employees salary.

Fair isn't a bad thing.

The minimum wage at least makes life a BIT more "fair" in that it keeps everyone aware that OTHERS CAN BE IN POVERTY. And if we can spend 2cents more for a Crappy Meal then maybe we will be more aware of the existence of our fellow humans who make these things for us.

ThatRobGuy · Feb 20, 2014

cow451 said:
Here's an intersting case (since you used a sports analogy) where a company had a monopoly, was sued, lost.... but won:

While the jury found that the NFL had willfully acquired and maintained a monopolization of professional football, it ruled against the rest of the USFL's claims. It did not find that the NFL controlled or attempted to control the television market. The vital claims were those based on television revenues, and those were the ones that the jury did not accept.

At what point did the NFL willfully acquire a monopoly?

If it's a case where they were simply better than their competition, than that's not a monopoly, that's just the free market.

For example, let's pretend that there are only two burger companies, Company A which makes delicious burgers, has good customer service, and convenient locations....and Company B, who's burgers taste lousy, the staff is rude, and they chose a location that's 15 miles outside of the main route.

If within a few months, Company A takes all of Company B's business, can that really be classified as some conspiracy to willfully acquire a monopoly???

Now, if it's a case where Company A offered the meat delivery company additional funds to specifically not make fresh deliveries in order to sabotage Company B, then that may be something to look in to...

...but simply picking up new business due to being better that your competitors is what true competition is all about...companies are supposed to try to deliver the best product they can.

ThatRobGuy · Feb 20, 2014

MikeCarra said:
Ironically that only seems to work when people complain about the upper crust getting more and more.

Seems to me the working people of the US have been getting HELD DOWN for quite some time.

How have the working people been held down? I might remind you that 80% of millionaires are 1st generation wealthy so obviously someone's been working their way out of the middle class...

I think people tend to view the situation incorrectly... instead of saying "what can we do to get our companies to pay us more for doing this job?", the question should be "what can we do to get a job that pays more money?"

For too long, people go accustomed to the concept that tenure = value and just grew to expect that they're somehow worth more money simply because they've been there a year longer.

The middle class wages have stagnated for 30+ years now. Meanwhile the C-suite has seen 100%+ increases in salary.

Well, one thing we need to look at is how the definition of middle class has changed over the past 30-50 years.

In terms of cash value, adjusted for inflation, $65k today would be the equivalent of making $8,200 in 1960.

Today, about a third of households make $65k+
In 1960, the percentage of people making $8k+ was much lower than 34% (according to the US census for 1960, only ~10 million of the ~50 million households had a income of over $8k in those days...)

Another fun fact from the US census site...

The median square footage of a single-family home
built in the 1960s or earlier stands at 1,500 square
feet today. In comparison, the median square footage
of single-family homes built between 2005 and 2009
and between 2000 and 2004 stand today at 2,200
square feet

Look at some of the other differences between 1960 and now in terms of what's considered middle class...

No Cable TV or Internet ($120/month bundle)
No $100/month smartphone plans
No spending $300/month on dining out
You didn't spend 5-10% of your total yearly income amount on Christmas shopping

I think a lot of this comes from peoples' tastes getting more and more elaborate over the years and raising the bar on what's considered 'middle class'.

The stock market is growing to unheard of heights...but only a small group of people enjoy that increase.

Small group? ...I guess if you consider "anyone and everyone with a 401k" a small group...

So you think WalMart = more people winning? I don't. I don't like it that at some points in WalMart's history their employees have been the largest single group of users of public aid services which I pay for.

It's not Wal-Mart's job to make "more people win", it's their job to "make Wal-Mart win" and it'd be foolish to expect anything else from them.

Do you honestly think that if Wal-Mart weren't there, the people who work for them would somehow all magically have $50k+ jobs instead?

USCGrad90 · Feb 20, 2014

With all the discussion about the purchasing power of the minimum wage - what happens when the wage is raised and costs for product and services go up? Doesn't it essentially put you right back in the same place, except business owners bear more costs and the small business owner is hurt a lot more than the big corporations?
As far as everyone else in the middle - we don't get a pay raise, so we also bear the burden of increased costs for products and services with no change in income.
The problem as I see it is that the types of jobs and available pay are the problem. Service industry is typically low pay with minimal advancement, while technology and manufacturing jobs are a better way to improve the economy and the opportunity for advancement. A counter job at McDonalds was not intended to be the way to support your household. Why not find a way to offer incentives to business to promote higher paying jobs and training rather than simply making a ineffective requirement for higher minimum wage? More manufacturing and technology in the US versus outsourcing everything.
Also - Does anybody know roughly how many jobs would be affected by the minimum wage increase versus other jobs that already pay more than that?

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