Exactly why there should be no minimum wage. If someone is willing to work for less then let them.
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How much does McDonalds pay?
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Exactly why there should be no minimum wage. If someone is willing to work for less then let them.
$8/hr?? Oh good grief... when I worked at Mickey Ds, I remember how wonderful it was to finally get that raise that put me at $2/hr! I finally made it up to $2.25. That was luxury, let me tell you.
'course this was a long time ago.....
At the time, ours was the busiest Mickey Ds in Canada. Let me tell you, you don't know stress until you've worked the grill on days when you are lightly staffed and 4 busses of rugby players pull up. Or the Grape and Wine Parade days when there are a couple of dozen busses just waiting to get into the parking lot. We could do as much sales in an hour as some stores did in a week. Quality control was not what HQ would have liked on those days....
But we got the product out the door.
'course this was a long time ago.....
At the time, ours was the busiest Mickey Ds in Canada. Let me tell you, you don't know stress until you've worked the grill on days when you are lightly staffed and 4 busses of rugby players pull up. Or the Grape and Wine Parade days when there are a couple of dozen busses just waiting to get into the parking lot. We could do as much sales in an hour as some stores did in a week. Quality control was not what HQ would have liked on those days....
But we got the product out the door.Two things. First, people usually are not "willing" to work - they usually "need" to work. Society called for the introduction of minimum wages when companies were shown to be actively pushing wages into the basement.
Secondly, people who are not able to earn a "living" wage are drain on society... i.e. you. They need more taxpayer paid social supports. They resort to crime. They don't move out of your house (in the case of family members). They can't afford to go to school to upgrade skills. They're unemployed more often and for longer periods. Would you rather be supporting them with your tax dollars, or would you prefer the corps to pay a living wage?
I think the biggest issue with a minimum wage is that most jurisdiction don't raise it often enough. What happens is that the wage gets frozen for 5 or 10 years until there is so much pressure to raise it. Then when it get's raised it goes up by a big jump. I think most companies aren't against paying a minimum wage... it's the sudden, unplanned for, big jumps that occur. It throws all of your longterm planning for costs out the door. If the minimum wage went up every year by that year's COLA then companies would just build that into their planning models. It becomes predictable and manageable. Instead of unpredictable and upsetting to longterm plans.
Just my $.02 plus COLA.
If you and someone are competing for one job and you offer to work for less money and the other doesn't then that is willing and you also need the job. I don't see the need for a minimum wage, if people want to work for below then they should be allowed.
If I "need" to work to support me and/or my family, then a company is going "coerce" me into accepting the lower wages. That doesn't make me "willing" that just makes me desperate. And, as was shown in the last century.... companies were shown to be manipulating the system to drive wages into the basement. They couldn't be trusted to pay a fair wage, so society enacted the minimum wage laws.
Companies were also using this leverage to make people "willing" to accept wage cuts even after being hired, with the threat of being fired if they didn't match the wage that someone else might be "willing " to accept.
By your logic, if you are renting an apartment, then you could be evicted by the landlord if someone came along and was "willing" to pay just $10 a month more. Unless you were "willing" to pay at least as much as they were.
That would be a interesting system. Each month you would have to go to an auction and 'bid' how much you would be 'willing' to pay to stay in your home. As a landlord I'd love that. And I'm sure I'd never ever do anything to keep the prices up, like hire a shill....
If I "need" to work to support me and/or my family, then a company is going "coerce" me into accepting the lower wages. That doesn't make me "willing" that just makes me desperate. And, as was shown in the last century.... companies were shown to be manipulating the system to drive wages into the basement. They couldn't be trusted to pay a fair wage, so society enacted the minimum wage laws.
Companies were also using this leverage to make people "willing" to accept wage cuts even after being hired, with the threat of being fired if they didn't match the wage that someone else might be "willing " to accept.
By your logic, if you are renting an apartment, then you could be evicted by the landlord if someone came along and was "willing" to pay just $10 a month more. Unless you were "willing" to pay at least as much as they were.
That would be a interesting system. Each month you would have to go to an auction and 'bid' how much you would be 'willing' to pay to stay in your home. As a landlord I'd love that. And I'm sure I'd never ever do anything to keep the prices up, like hire a shill....
If there is someone willing to work for less and does the same amount of work in the same amount of time why wouldn't to company give the job to the person who wants less money?
If I were a landlord and someone came along willing to pay more than someone else who already lives in my building, and assuming they and I are under no contract for length of stay or price, then why wouldn't I kick them out and take the higher price? It is a good I make my tenants sign contracts.
If landlords were able to kick people out simply because someone came along with more money, then landlords would not be inclined to use contracts. I live in a jurisdiction where landlords are not able to evict tenants without due process, regardless of whether a contract is in place or not. And the law has been extended to include non-traditional forms of housing, thankfully. A friend of mine has just been saved from becoming homeless because of that protection.
Minimum wage legislation, and landlord-tenancy acts, were put in place because the harm that some big corps were doing was considered to be harmful to society. It costs a society more to have big corps able to coerce people (tenants, employees) into being "willing" to accept unacceptable offers. The power in these situations is totally unbalanced, and the corps have themselves willing to use that power to put people into inhumane conditions.
I live in a slightly socialist country, and I like the stability, the wealth, the predictability, and the fact that I have a better chance of rising to the top than someone in my situation has in the USA. [warning: I am poking my tongue firmly in cheek.... so don't get in tizzy] But it's true.... as an immigrant to Canada I can become Prime Minister, the Head of Government. Though, sadly, I will never become Head of State. Though if I polish my french I might become her representative.
Funk that, and funk working at McDonalds - I'm gonna be a prison guard and earn $200,000 a year, get 7 weeks of vacation per year, with 5 of those vacation weeks being fully paid weeks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704132204576285471510530398.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The original question would have been more helpful if they had specified where they were... location is key here.