jordan0386
Member
$9 bucks an hour seems way more reasonable from a business standpoint.
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Hundreds of Fast-Food Workers Strike for Living Wage, Inspired by Wal-Mart Strike
- Thread starter kame-sennin
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yeah how dare she have a phone rite
HUMAN RIGHT
Whats worse is that 99% of poor people have refridgerators
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
"Look poorer for me!"
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Because doing unskilled labor means you shouldn't be able to reasonably afford things.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
McDonald's raising their wages wouldn't increase the minimum wage.
Paying for a smartphone isn't exactly the best way to live cheaply.
Anyone who regularly feeds their family at McDonalds has far more money than I do, and I'm pretty well off.
Feeding five hungry mouths can be accomplished for far less by making your meals at home.
And some even have TVs! And couches!
I even saw a dirty poor the other day with a bed. The horror!
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
How do you know that person is paying for it?
It just means you've created artificial demand for a product in high supply. Many skilled labor jobs pay 15 an hour. If McDonald's is paying that much they'll have to raise their wages in turn, etc, etc. Wages across the board would be raised thereby raising prices and creating inflation.
... i'm sure this strike will be a huge success.
Smartphones are pretty cheap these days
shadowsdarknes
Member
Interesting and relevant article. I wonder what is causing more job creation in NJ. It seems that effect is alluding economists and with good reason.
Advocacy for moderate increases to wage floors is understandable and obvious. A healthy economy allows these increases to happen.
Edit:
It varies state to state. In MA I believe it's $8.00 and $8.50 in NJ.
If they make those companies lots of money then why wouldn't'#t they pay out of their nose to keep them? These non-skilled workers are replaceable, they are lucky to even have a job in this climate. There would be hundreds of people waiting outside for a minimum wage job
Angry Fork
Member
And why is that not a good thing? Take it out of CEO pay.
Becuase the 1% have all the monies...hurr durrr
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
To quote myself
It's not rocket science. Only people who think this makes sense are people making 7 bucks an hour. Go figure
Angry Fork
Member
Limiting CEO pay can offshoot costs of raising wages across the board, that's the point I was making. It doesn't require raising prices and even if it did that's better than unlivable wages.
CEO pay is just a juicy target with no real meat, ala income taxes on the top bracket.
Alright, let's divy this up.
$41.90 for each employee per year?
2 cents per hour of full time employment?
I suppose we could narrow this number down to minimum wage employees but you get the idea.
Also, from April 2011:
I've never understood this mentality that simply targeting the CEOs pay will solve all of the problems. Heard that all the time on campus when people claimed that the auto industry wouldn't have been in trouble if the people at the top took less.
Yup, its sheer coincidence that exploding CEO pay, low taxes and incredibly low capital gains tax has coincided with an ever increasing wealth inequality between the top 1% and the rest and stagnant/reduction in purchasing power for the rest of the nation
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-fix-the-economy-in-one-simple-chart-2012-8
course, his solution is pure fantasy, but he has nice figures and graphs
I'm willing to listen if you can walk me through the numbers. But to simply make a statement that CEO pay affects minimum wage workers isn't supported by the math. You would have to broaden the pool to the entire corporate management structure to even begin finding the numbers.
His solution supports what I just mentioned above.
Yes, reduction of profit would be the key to paying workers more, not reduction of CEO pay. Now, the consequences of profit reduction would quickly play out as well with a publicly traded company, but that's a different discussion entirely.
My own unfounded suspicion is that income inequality has much more to do with the increase in large, publicly traded companies that have long left the stewardship of their founder and are now 100% profit motivated with no personal stake in the employees.
I edited my post to include a link with some figures and graphs for you.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Those poor Australian CEOs and franchise owners must have to buy food from their own business to support their poor lifestyle since their workers are being paid a reasonable amount.
The problem is, is that his solution wont work because, like you mentioned, CEOs are beholden to their shareholders who demand short term profits for a hefty stock price.
Good... pay them more and raise prices, give me more good reasons not to eat fast food. The workers have my sympathy but in the rare occasions that I do eat fast food it's only because it's cheap, the fast part is fully secondary. As soon as the cheap part is removed I'm out completely. Unless they dramatically raise quality which I see never happening.
UltimaPooh
Member
Being a CEO does not require skills.
Mistake
Member
It may be 9 pages in, but I thought I would share some of my experiences. I worked at a McDonalds for about a year at $8.20, and had a one bedroom apartment for $550 a month with everything but electric ($30 max a month). I was one lucky bastard to have that apartment, because everything else was more expensive, and without any utilities. A studio where I lived would break even, if not cost more than $550. Also, it's not possible to share a one bedroom if you want any kind of privacy, or if you can't find someone you can trust. I tried and it was a disaster.
-If I wasn't able to get 40+ hours a week, I couldn't do it. Same if my wage were lower.
-If I had to pay a higher rent than this, I couldn't do it
-My tracphone was only for emergencies or short work calls
-I went to the pantry on a regular basis. My diet was ramen, cereal, pasta, chicken, rice, and canned vegetables. If there wasn't a pantry, I couldn't do it. Peanut butter and jelly was my only work lunch. I applied for food stamps but never saw them, and any money I saved went to eating a little better or put aside for emergencies.
-I did not drive my car (and insurance was optional thank god). Gas was also for emergencies or groceries, I walked to work.
-Health insurance? Dental? Nope. However, the hospitals and physicians where I lived did financial assistance so I could get covered 100% (but still no dental)
Some additional things to point out would be that I had no dependents, no debts, no high end prescription costs, my vehicle was reliable, and that more hours would lead to a less healthy diet and less sleep (which happened time to time).
I could live, but man did it suck.
-If I wasn't able to get 40+ hours a week, I couldn't do it. Same if my wage were lower.
-If I had to pay a higher rent than this, I couldn't do it
-My tracphone was only for emergencies or short work calls
-I went to the pantry on a regular basis. My diet was ramen, cereal, pasta, chicken, rice, and canned vegetables. If there wasn't a pantry, I couldn't do it. Peanut butter and jelly was my only work lunch. I applied for food stamps but never saw them, and any money I saved went to eating a little better or put aside for emergencies.
-I did not drive my car (and insurance was optional thank god). Gas was also for emergencies or groceries, I walked to work.
-Health insurance? Dental? Nope. However, the hospitals and physicians where I lived did financial assistance so I could get covered 100% (but still no dental)
Some additional things to point out would be that I had no dependents, no debts, no high end prescription costs, my vehicle was reliable, and that more hours would lead to a less healthy diet and less sleep (which happened time to time).
I could live, but man did it suck.
The minimum wage is provincial in Canada. It varies throughout the country. Same with the US.
Lagspike_exe
Member
In what universe is this?
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
That's the spirit.
what's really at hand here is a firm's ability to make profit; they don't act with any other consideration. whether their workers have economic security or enough disposable income for leisure, human capital, family, etc. is absolutely not a factor in their decision making or the laws of motion reproducing capitalist activity at large. creditors and governments can pick up the slack and buffer the low wages they pay. a wage is only 'too low' from a capitalist's perspective if their workforce can't return the next day to generate a surplus from their labour. i'm sorry to say, a $7.25 hour wage is indeed a livable wage in the sense it keeps them fed, alive and back at the grill the next day to extract profit from
large firms need to stay competitive and hire the most talented/experienced management possible. the grotesque executive pay doled out to top the of the company comes with that. even if governments created a ceiling on pay, that money wouldn't return to the workers at the bottom but be paid out in dividends or more likely invested and circulated in such a way to improve the firm's competitive position
I can only imagine that if McDonald's does get forced to up their minimum wage then they will respond with further automation within franchisees to cut down employee headcount in an effort to minimize labor costs. Won't be immediate but will happen in time.
They are already trialling self serve ordering kiosks here in Australia, you don't even have to interact with a cashier if you don't want. Order with your iPhone, pay via Visa or MasterCard, grab your receipt with meal ticket number and wait. Bet it catches on.
They are already trialling self serve ordering kiosks here in Australia, you don't even have to interact with a cashier if you don't want. Order with your iPhone, pay via Visa or MasterCard, grab your receipt with meal ticket number and wait. Bet it catches on.
They do live in NYC so $15 isn't out line. If this was anywhere else outside of San Fran your point would be valid.
And what if it wasn't the plan but that's where luck drops you to? You get cancer, get injured by a drunk driver, something else bad happens - do we just shrug and leave those people to work as pay slaves? It's no ones dream but how does that deny them the right for dignified pay?
n64coder
Member
Yes, it does seem unfair that someone like Brad Pitt can make $15M per film but he is an entertainer who reaches out to millions of people. People are willing to pay $10 to see a movie or pay $15 for the DVD/blu-ray, cable income, pay-per-view, streaming, etc all help to rake in more money for his film. A film with Brad is likely to rake in $500M lifetime revenue over some film with a nobody in it. If people stop going to the movies or watching film, then there will be less money and consequently Brad won't make as much.
A NFL football player like Tom Brady makes $20M a season. An average football stadium holds 70K people paying $100 each for $7M/game plus concessions, parking, apparel with many more people watching on TV. Someone like Tom makes it more likely to get you into the Super Bowl which means even more revenue. People stop going to games or watching it on TV means less revenue and then less pay for Tom.
Those people make big money since they have a big impact on incoming revenue.
McDonalds, Sports Authority are corporations controlled by shareholders. I own stock/mutual funds through my IRA/401K and private holdings. Many other people do. A goal of a corporation is to make money to return to shareholders in the form of higher stock prices or dividends. If people think a company is crap, there is less demand for the stock and the price goes down. The reason Sports Authority pay $8M is to get their name recognition up so that consumers want to go to their stores. If nobody knows Sports Authority, do you think people will go to their stores and spend money?
It's supply and demand. If you offer a job that pays $8/hr and you're getting enough quality applicants, then why pay more? If no one is applying for your job or you're not getting crappy applicants, then you'll increase your pay.
I remember working at Ponderosa steakhouse making $3.15/hr in high school. One of my colleagues quit to work at a supermarket as a bagger to make $4.50/hr. He was an excellent worker like me and a few others. The restaurant's response was to bump myself and the excellent coworkers to $4.50/hr in order to retain the good people. Supply and demand.
A poster posted this earlier and I think it deserves more attention because it is the reality of how a McDonald's operates.
My father-in-law owned few restaurants and yes, he made a good living. He has several houses, a big boat, several cars. I would say his net-worth is around $5-6M. But he worked his ass off to get there. He grew up in a poor family. He didn't spend much time with the family while the kids were growing up because he was always at the restaurants, overseeing things, dealing with customers. In his business, yes, he had some good workers but he also had a bunch of idiots who call in sick, not doing their job, etc. It's a stressful way to make a lot of money.
Agreed. It goes back to supply/demand. There's enough workers willing to work for crappy wages.
This. I'm always surprised when these sorts of threads crop up that more people don't realize this.
brb applying for CEO jobs
The whole low end of the pay curve needs to be adjusted up.
No one (sane) is saying that fast food workers should be paid doubled while nothing else changes.
out0v0rder
Member
Rough situation, every single worker could be fired at once and there is still enough demand to where all those jobs could be replaced the next day
You Are Viewtiful
Member
Instead of increasing minimum wage why doesn't the government just subsidize things that are essential to live in a developed country like shelter, food, transportation, healthcare, education, internet etc. all of which will have a less damaging effect (in fact, will have a positive effect) on the economy.
Increasing minimum wages just means more unemployment and passing cost on to consumers disregarding their ability to pay, and will be back to where we started.
Increasing minimum wages just means more unemployment and passing cost on to consumers disregarding their ability to pay, and will be back to where we started.
Gotta love marketplace apostles.
"Minimum wages hurt employment!"
Evidence to the contrary.
"Well, the current level of minimum wage might be okay, but anything over than and it's UNEMPLOYMENT FOR ALL; trust us, sure, we wrong about it before, but this time we're super serious".
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