Seattle raises minimum wage to $15/hr

[nando]

I know what you're doing here, but most people realize that it's possible for a regularly motivated and intelligent individual to make lazy and stupid decisions. We all do it in many different ways. Do I pack a lunch or buy lunch? I know the intelligent answer, but sometimes I'm too lazy. You get the picture. When it comes to employment and the responsibility that goes with CARING FOR MY FAMILY without anyone else's assistance I take great care it not making stupid or lazy decisions. To answer your question, I've never been poor...I was broke for most of my twenties as a result of my decisions, some were good and others weren't so good...but I didn't need to rely on minimum wage to pay the bills. So go ahead and dismiss this like everything else that doesn't fit inside the box you've built for yourself, that's fine. People who choose to make excuses for their lack of success have no place.

you keep saying it in different ways but you're just saying the same thing. that the only reason people are poor is because they made poor decisions (and by extension, that they aren't intelligent), which is utter nonsense. yeah, there are definitely examples of people who make poor choices, but we're talking about millions of people here. talk about "putting people in a box".

[mrsleeve]

as much as I prefer not to unhide your comments and respond to you, I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that real wages have been falling for the past 50 years...hopefully you realize that the chart you posted indicates that. not sure what you intended by posting it because it undermines your argument against an increase in the minimum wage

you dont think I dont realize real wages have been on the down hill, .............. I am very familiar with this concept, nice to see that point of the graphic went right over your head, failure to see the trees due to forest much

that still does not mean I support raising a minimum wage standard to some arbitrary number that sounds good. With out real wages increasing in the rest of the economy (since we are a service industry based system it seems now) minimum wages cant really increase either with out adversely affecting both overall output and employment. If your shit costs too much (due to increasing the wages) other people will stop buying your shit, = less business = less money = less needed employees on the pay roll, or you cut your costs by getting rid of employees and there by forcing the ones remaining to do more work for the same or marginally increased pay, proven by the last down turn. With the at least I still have a job, I will do what ever they want me to do to avoid the next round of layoffs mentality

I still yet to see how this is such a hard concept to grasp, look at your modern discount store or grocer they have adopted this model in the last decade very well. Where they only have 2 or 3 real people lines open and the cashier bags as well the rest of them you check, and bag your own shit, tender your own coin and have 1 person man a dozen fucking lines, that a decade ago would have had checker and a bagger on each line. Then you carry your own shit and load it your self a decade (well maybe 2 ) the kid would put them your car for you. Or like Sheetez gas stations (PA thing) where you order your own lunch on a key pad and take the ticket to the normal cashier that is taking money for everything from gas to Gatorade to your fresh hot sammich. This elimination of entry level/low skill workers only will get far worse, not to mention wait times and piss poor customer service will also get worse by making those positions more expensive to fill.

[ParsedOut]

you keep saying it in different ways but you're just saying the same thing. that the only reason people are poor is because they made poor decisions (and by extension, that they aren't intelligent), which is utter nonsense. yeah, there are definitely examples of people who make poor choices, but we're talking about millions of people here. talk about "putting people in a box".

What are the other factors, please do tell? Luck? Race? Gender? Sexual preference? If you really think any of these limit someone from making $10 an hour is absolute bullshit. Can you live on $10 an hour? Sure. Does it suck? Yep. It shouldn't be the business owners and customer's responsibility to pay for your "unpleasant" cost of living. That's why we have college, vocational schools, management programs, etc.

[smooth]

you dont think I dont realize real wages have been on the down hill, .............. I am very familiar with this concept, nice to see that point of the graphic went right over your head, failure to see the trees due to forest much

that still does not mean I support raising a minimum wage standard to some arbitrary number that sounds good. With out real wages increasing in the rest of the economy (since we are a service industry based system it seems now) minimum wages cant really increase either with out adversely affecting both overall output and employment. If your shit costs too much (due to increasing the wages) other people will stop buying your shit, = less business = less money = less needed employees on the pay roll, or you cut your costs by getting rid of employees and there by forcing the ones remaining to do more work for the same or marginally increased pay, proven by the last down turn. With the at least I still have a job, I will do what ever they want me to do to avoid the next round of layoffs mentality

I still yet to see how this is such a hard concept to grasp, look at your modern discount store or grocer they have adopted this model in the last decade very well. Where they only have 2 or 3 real people lines open and the cashier bags as well the rest of them you check, and bag your own shit, tender your own coin and have 1 person man a dozen fucking lines, that a decade ago would have had checker and a bagger on each line. Then you carry your own shit and load it your self a decade (well maybe 2 ) the kid would put them your car for you. Or like Sheetez gas stations (PA thing) where you order your own lunch on a key pad and take the ticket to the normal cashier that is taking money for everything from gas to Gatorade to your fresh hot sammich. This elimination of entry level/low skill workers only will get far worse, not to mention wait times and piss poor customer service will also get worse by making those positions more expensive to fill.

well, you're pretty much wrong on every single point so it's difficult to try and untangle it for you. Suffice to say that there have been numerous studies on the topic, history's verdict is already in, and what you claim would happen (that people lose their jobs when wages go up) is not what actually occurs.

The stuff you point to, about there being less people in those low-wage jobs, isn't due to wages going up. Point in fact, wages have gone *down* but your interpretation of that is missing the forest for the trees apparently

In any case, when wages go up, productivity goes up and turnover decreases ending up with the small business reducing training costs and increasing throughput. We also know that businesses don't cut jobs when wages go up so long as they have demand for their products. Businesses are going to have three people working if they need three people working, regardless of the wages for those three people. Businesses that pay their employees more report more satisfied workers, more productivity, and higher year-end profits. In fact, small, locally owned businesses tend to pay their workers higher than minimum wages already, as anyone here who has actually worked for a local small business can attest to, so these kinds of discussions don't impact them very often at all.

The reason there are less people in those service jobs you're pointing out isn't because wages have gone up, and not only because they've gone down as your graph illustrates, but because those businesses have workers running ragged and have managed to eek out more hours worked per week per worker than the rest of the industrial world.

The businesses you see doing the practices you are describing aren't small, locally owned businesses by and large. They're large corporations, or franchises, and their profits go eastward away from the communities that the dollars are spent inside. Those dollars go into corporate profits, which are at an all time high despite the doom and gloom prognosis of higher wages killing profits and jobs, and they don't tend to come back into the local communities. The larger the corporation, the shittier the pay, the higher the corporate profits, and the public is left taking up the slack in the form of welfare, healthcare, and childcare costs that the part-time, low-wage employees can't pay for themselves.

In any case, this will all be disregarded by the usual suspects in this thread as blather but it's all backed up by actual evidence, research, and history that tends to not match up with what large corporate political donors have to say about the matter...but why listen to reality when it's much easier to eat up whatever those wealthiest people in our country have to say about endangering their wealth. They probably wouldn't lie to protect their own interests, right?

[smooth]

What are the other factors, please do tell? Luck? Race? Gender? Sexual preference? If you really think any of these limit someone from making $10 an hour is absolute bullshit. Can you live on $10 an hour? Sure. Does it suck? Yep. It shouldn't be the business owners and customer's responsibility to pay for your "unpleasant" cost of living. That's why we have college, vocational schools, management programs, etc.

you think the bulk of our low-wage earners are making $10 bucks an hour?

and even if they were, no it's not possible to live on $10 dollars per hour!
If someone was able to get $10 dollars per hour, work 40 hours per week, and work every single day of the year, they'd make just under $20,000 dollars per year before taxes!

Low-wage earners don't work 40 hours per week because businesses don't want to pay benefits, but let's assume they work 2 part time jobs (which many low-wage earners have to do in order to make ends meet)...

Even in Arizona, where the cost of living is ridiculously low, rent for a two bedroom apartment averages around $1,000 dollars per month (double that if they live anywhere someone would actually want to live, like in San Diego or Seattle). That leaves the person to live on less than $10,000 dollars per year for food, utilities, transportation, child care, and...well there can't be an and. There's no way to swing that. Child care alone absorbed the other $1,000 dollars per month...so a single mother would need to choose between transportation, juggling family members to pick up days of child care when school isn't in session, and food. Which is why we have millions of children that go to bed each night in this country either hungry or just about hungry.

And we haven't even begun to discuss how the poverty line is calculated and the problems associated with that. But for anyone actually interested in facts, the woman who came up with the basic food basket that is used as the baseline calculation (ignoring the 50's conceptions of nutrition and the ancient assumption that one's food comprises 1/3 of their income so we can multiply that basic food basket by three and arrive at what someone should be earning per year) has since denounced its use as a sustainable diet. In fact, she claims it was merely supposed to be what someone could live on for a short period of time without starving...not something to be used as a measure of what someone needed to eat per year and maintain a healthy weight.

[BraveUlysses]

that still does not mean I support raising a minimum wage standard to some arbitrary number that sounds good.

Based on what do you determine that the 15/hr wage is arbitrary?

With out real wages increasing in the rest of the economy (since we are a service industry based system it seems now) minimum wages cant really increase either with out adversely affecting both overall output and employment. If your shit costs too much (due to increasing the wages) other people will stop buying your shit, = less business = less money = less needed employees on the pay roll, or you cut your costs by getting rid of employees and there by forcing the ones remaining to do more work for the same or marginally increased pay, proven by the last down turn. With the at least I still have a job, I will do what ever they want me to do to avoid the next round of layoffs mentality

That's a economics analysis worthy of talk radio, but it impresses nobody who actually understands economics. Your analysis misses the mark in so many ways:

How many businesses are affected by this change?
What are their labor costs? What percentage of their overall costs are due to labor? How much of the labor force is affected by this change?
Will this merely cause businesses to relocate to outside the city limits? How many of them will? How will businesses near the city limits compete with similar businesses outside the city limits?
Will employees of the same company at different locations NOT in Seattle get additional wages to match those in Seattle? (some companies are saying they WILL do this actually)

I still yet to see how this is such a hard concept to grasp, look at your modern discount store or grocer they have adopted this model in the last decade very well. Where they only have 2 or 3 real people lines open and the cashier bags as well the rest of them you check, and bag your own shit, tender your own coin and have 1 person man a dozen fucking lines, that a decade ago would have had checker and a bagger on each line. Then you carry your own shit and load it your self a decade (well maybe 2 ) the kid would put them your car for you.

You might have a point here if wages have been increasing too much to be sustainable for grocers--but that's not the case at all. These things would have never existed without widespread price drops on touch screen computers.

Self checkouts exist for convenience too, not just to save money. Furthermore, just because people are replaced by a machine it doesn't mean they aren't employed elsewhere in the store.

Self checkouts are great for quick checkouts. There's nothing more annoying than having those "express checkout" lanes where there's an item limit and some old lady has one item over the limit and takes forever to write a check. Not to mention that the express checkout lanes are almost always full too.

But some stores have so much theft they've taken them out.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Anyone saying they don't want to see people flipping burgers to get $15.00? Fuck you. You flip burgers for $9.75. It's fucking work. "Oh, work harder" you say? You want to know what Lowe's Inc. told me when I busted my ass on the floor? "You work too well on the floor, sorry, you won't ever be moved onto management. We can't afford to lose you..." - "Oh really? What's my end game here in say 5 years?" - "Well, we can maybe get you to $12.00/hr by that time frame...". Did I leave and get a "better" job? Sure. But that's absolute garbage. Look at Lowe's profit margins.

Hard work in big box operations does not translate to bettering yourself.

Was Home Depot not hiring? HD Supply? Walmart (section manager, for example)? McMaster-Carr? Amazon?

You talk about that like there was nothing to be done about it, but there's ALWAYS *SOMETHING* that can be done.

I don't think anyone disputes that low wage work is work in its truest sense.

I've done paper machine alignment. It's demanding work with long hours in a dirty environment that has to be done with precision. I wasn't making minimum wage, but I was hardly the top of the hourly charts either (I didn't have as good a union as the longshoremen... or any union for that matter).
It sucked and the only potential for increased income was to work more jobs at more work sites and spend more nights away from home.

I don't work there anymore and I've more than doubled my income. I had to earn a master's degree in the interim. Options are out there to find, but you have to go find them and make them work.

[ParsedOut]

you think the bulk of our low-wage earners are making $10 bucks an hour?

and even if they were, no it's not possible to live on $10 dollars per hour!
If someone was able to get $10 dollars per hour, work 40 hours per week, and work every single day of the year, they'd make just under $20,000 dollars per year before taxes!

Low-wage earners don't work 40 hours per week because businesses don't want to pay benefits, but let's assume they work 2 part time jobs (which many low-wage earners have to do in order to make ends meet)...

Even in Arizona, where the cost of living is ridiculously low, rent for a two bedroom apartment averages around $1,000 dollars per month (double that if they live anywhere someone would actually want to live, like in San Diego or Seattle). That leaves the person to live on less than $10,000 dollars per year for food, utilities, transportation, child care, and...well there can't be an and. There's no way to swing that. Child care alone absorbed the other $1,000 dollars per month...so a single mother would need to choose between transportation, juggling family members to pick up days of child care when school isn't in session, and food. Which is why we have millions of children that go to bed each night in this country either hungry or just about hungry.

And we haven't even begun to discuss how the poverty line is calculated and the problems associated with that. But for anyone actually interested in facts, the woman who came up with the basic food basket that is used as the baseline calculation (ignoring the 50's conceptions of nutrition and the ancient assumption that one's food comprises 1/3 of their income so we can multiply that basic food basket by three and arrive at what someone should be earning per year) has since denounced its use as a sustainable diet. In fact, she claims it was merely supposed to be what someone could live on for a short period of time without starving...not something to be used as a measure of what someone needed to eat per year and maintain a healthy weight.

$10 was an arbitrary low income figure. At any rate, you assume there is nothing this "single mother" can do to make more. This all comes down to wealth distribution and some people are for it and some are against it. For the record, you don't have to be a 1% Scrooge McDuck to think it's a bad idea.

[smooth]

Was Home Depot not hiring? HD Supply? Walmart (section manager, for example)? McMaster-Carr? Amazon?

You talk about that like there was nothing to be done about it, but there's ALWAYS *SOMETHING* that can be done.

apparently it's difficult to see the entire paragraph he wrote from up on your soapbox (or that master's program you paid for didn't teach you to read for comprehension) because it looks like he said he left for a better job.

that is, the problem wasn't that there aren't options but that profit margins at his old work indicated to him that there was plenty of room to pay labor a higher wage without going under :roll:

[smooth]

$10 was an arbitrary low income figure.

quick thought exercise for you: does the picture I painted get better or worse if the person is making less than $10 dollars per hour?
LMFAO, you'll argue your dick into the ground on this one before you believe the facts so have at it bud

At any rate, you assume there is nothing this "single mother" can do to make more. This all comes down to wealth distribution and some people are for it and some are against it. For the record, you don't have to be a 1% Scrooge McDuck to think it's a bad idea.

nope, I recognize that some people really are just that fucking stupid to argue against their own class' economic interest

[Dozyproductions]

(since we are a service industry based system it seems now)

And that's the underlying problem. Politicize the economic process and the market can't stabilize itself.

[The Dark Side of Will]

apparently it's difficult to see the entire paragraph he wrote from up on your soapbox (or that master's program you paid for didn't teach you to read for comprehension) because it looks like he said he left for a better job.

that is, the problem wasn't that there aren't options but that profit margins at his old work indicated to him that there was plenty of room to pay labor a higher wage without going under :roll:

The point was that "hard work" doesn't always mean "for the same employer".
If your current employer doesn't want to move you up... so what? It's their loss when you go somewhere else. That's why the smart employers move motivated people up... because the employer's options typically are move them up or lose them.

[G-Man the Visionary]

Everyone wants to redistribute the wealth. I personally hate poverty, but if that person really hated it themselves then they would find a way out. There's enough out there for everyone, just takes some go getting. Too bad in America we teach primarily to A.) Go to school. B.) Get good grades. C.) Get a good job.
Now, the minority in this situation is the entrepreneur, and he is likely the ambitious one that said "eff that junk, I want to employ that booksmart guy, or that high school stoner". Now he invests all of his time and money wisely only to be told he has to pay that person (employee) more than they have accepted as an acceptable wage, and now cannot afford to stay in business. Ask me how I know. Well, doesn't matter how, it just makes complete sense, unless you've been the same ignorant that you claim everyone else is and have never thought about the other side of the coin. It can be raised, just moderately, and in a way that small businesses quit getting squeezed out of existence.

[mrsleeve]

And that's the underlying problem. Politicize the economic process and the market can't stabilize itself.

on this we agree, our leaders wont let it correct

[smooth]

It can be raised, just moderately, and in a way that small businesses quit getting squeezed out of existence.

You think that small businesses are getting squeezed out of existence by incremental, nominal increases of the minimum wage?