UAW Strikes
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StangerBanger96;187494 wrote:
The only intrusion I waver on is the minimum wage issue...It'd be interesting to see how the market adapted to an abolishment of the min. wage. It'd also be interesting to see how bad the president in office at the time of that happening lost his next election bid (if they were still in their first term).Yes. Take away the bread and circuses and the state-created dependants will get unruly.
Another thing that really gets to me is when a company is floundering such as Northwest and they try to bargain with the Union to do pay cuts so the company doesn't go under. It pisses me off that the Union assholes have the nerve to fight the pay cuts because they don't want to work for much less. Take the fucking pay cut or risk losing your job completely because your company goes under. I'd rather work for less than be unemployed and looking for a job because my Union made the company go under due to their unwillingness to budge on pay/benefit cuts.
You're already too smart / ethical / whatever to join a union. There's no incentive to take a paycut -- if the company tanks or the position is otherwise eliminated, the unemployment benefit you'll receive is based on your pay at the time of termination. Since union labor already has the culture of dependant entitlement drilled into them, there's no reason for them to jeapordize the artificially high unemployment benefits they'll collect once their employer tanks completely.
That said, I don't think unions are the biggest problem in the airline industry. I haven't studied it much, but I suspect a big part of what's going on are some side effects of FAA rules, and the continual subsidy/bailout of certain airlines by the government. Why is it that Jet Blue and Southwest are highly profitable and their customers love them?
Hopefully the dinosaurs in the aviation industry will fold and a variety of upstarts not shackled with bad labor and worse managers will fill in the gaps. Absent intervention (like bailouts), the market will tend to correct sub-optimal investments of labor and capital and we'll all be better off for it.
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GarageAlchemist;187500 wrote:
what i was saying happens to teachers all the time, there has been one guy there for 20 some years, their pay goes up yearly, by the time 20 years is up, they cost almost twice as much as someone that is starting on the bottom of the pay scale.So what does that have to do with the minimum wage?
Either the person with 20 years experience is doing 2x good a job as an entry level person, or they aren't. If they aren't, they probably shouldn't be making 2x as much.
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thrash;187501 wrote:
Why is it that Jet Blue and Southwest are highly profitable and their customers love them?
I know Southwest is successful for 2 big reasons. They buy gas futures and had a hunch prices would spike soon so they bargained with gas companies to supply them with gas at the price it was like 6 years ago...this agreement ends in a year or 2 I believe. Another reason is they don't use hubs. They have direct flights and don't have to pay astronomical prices to get hubs in some major airports that other airlines pay out the nose for.MisterCMK;187504 wrote:
Lets say that they abolish minimum wage and the average wage a person makes drops due to pay cuts. That person will have less income available and will spend less money causing less sales/revenue and possibly resulting in further pay/job cutsThe reason it works is because as the average pay drops, the price per good produced drops as well. This in turn causes the retail prices to drop (theoretically) because free market competition forces it to. If you try to keep selling at the inflated price then places like Walmart put you out of business because you're selling your product for $100 even though market value is $80 and thats what Walmart sells it at. Thus the avg consumer makes less but the products in the market cost less to produce and thus sell for less.
Minimum wage increases just drive prices up so we're right back to where we were before. Everyone makes more due to the hike but this pay raise also means companies have to raise prices on their products to continue profiting. Thus the entire market just does one giant shift upward and no actual change is made. You think you make more, but everything costs more so you really make the same.
Kinda like back in the day cars cost $5000 brand new and annual income was $20,000. Now cars cost $20,000 brand new and you make $80,000 annual income. No real difference in ratios and percentages but you feel wealthier because you have "more".
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MisterCMK;187504 wrote:
Lets say that they abolish minimum wage and the average wage a person makes drops due to pay cuts.The maximum pct of people that this might happen to: 2% of the work force
That person will have less income available and will spend less money causing less sales/revenue and possibly resulting in further pay/job cuts
The worst case is that this person joins the ranks of the unemployed or who are on some sort of aid program. As mentioned earlier, the # of unemployed people are already larger than the # of minimum wage earners. The economy and a variety of business can already cope with an unemployment rate considerably higher than the percantage of people who could POTENTIALLY be negatively impacted by a minimum wage reduction.
You also discount entirely the impact of labor done beneath the minimum wage rate. Think of all of the work currently not getting done because it is illegal to pay someone less than minimum wage to do that work. Whenever there is commerce, the economy is energized and the standard of living for everybody in aggregate is improved. A specific individual may perceive that they are getting a shitty deal temporarily, but the long term and aggregate effects are that everyone is better off.
Like i said -- the minimum wage is a price floor. Price floors in every other type of commodity screw up the market. You have gluts and shortages, people cannot accurately forecast needs, and a host of other issues. I don't see why people think labor should be different.
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This is kind of getting off topic, but I wonder how many people here are actually making the minimum wage? I'd think in general that the mostly young crowd on this forum would be more likely to be in a position to be stuck in a minimum wage job than the national average. It looks like the minimum wage is $5.85, don't you make a lot more than that starting out at a fast food place?
DaveH
'94 Supra- 7.77 @ 176mph -
DaveH;187534 wrote:
This is kind of getting off topic, but I wonder how many people here are actually making the minimum wage? I'd think in general that the mostly young crowd on this forum would be more likely to be in a position to be stuck in a minimum wage job than the national average. It looks like the minimum wage is $5.85, don't you make a lot more than that starting out at a fast food place?When I was 15 (4 years ago) I started at $5.25 at McDonalds...10cents above minimum wage. 1 month later when I turned 16 I got a $1 raise so i was at $6.25. When I quit I was making $7.85.
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StangerBanger96;187539 wrote:
When I was 15 (4 years ago) I started at $5.25 at McDonalds...10cents above minimum wage. 1 month later when I turned 16 I got a $1 raise so i was at $6.25. When I quit I was making $7.85.But the real question is, where would have you started at w/ no minimum wage?
The reason I ask is because so many people at age 14+ want to own a car. At sub-min wage it would be extremely tough to afford one which would hurt both the potential owner and local businesses. Sure their parents could MAYBE buy them one, but what does that teach the kid in terms of financial responsibility? At minimum wage, at least the beginning driver can get into an entry level car...sub $3000 if their parents co-sign or if they save up their money and buy one outright. The next question is, does the kid need a car? Maybe yes, maybe no...depends a lot on the situation. Completely abolishing the minimum wage will have a HUGE impact on the economy...for the worse. Less money earned = less money spent.
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tjamz;187544 wrote:
But the real question is, where would have you started at w/ no minimum wage?To answer that with a sense of whether or not the amount was enough you'd also have to know what kind of effect a no-minimum-wage market would have on prices of goods. If it meant I started at $2.50 an hour but clothing cost $10, Abercrombie cost $30, Windows XP Pro cost $60, GT42's cost $300, my car cost $2500 (insert whatever you currently like and divide the price by about 1/3 to 1/2) well then...I wouldn't really complain probably.
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Chuck is right. It looks great on paper, but I just don't think it would work.
Who's to say what a person's worth? What's to stop employers from hiring people at $1 an hour? Sure it's a mutual agreement, but if someone says they're worth $10 an hour and no company will give them more than $1, what else can they do but settle for next to nothing? I understand what you guys are saying, but it's just not realistic.
Yeah, wage goes down, demand for expensive goods go down, prices go down. I get it. But that compensation wouldn't be instantaneous and it would be WAY too big of a shock to the economy to not throw things into complete chaos.
Wouldn't shareholders take their money and run from a company that couldn't sell their products because people couldn't afford them? Wouldn't that cause a company to go under?
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You guys keep making these claims and then not substantiating them. Abolishing the minimum wage will NOT wreck the economy. We've already established that only 2% of people are actually earning minimum wage as it is. The bottom income earners are not the engine of economic activity, and lowering existing wages will not destroy consumption.
Removing the minimum wage will allow more people to get jobs legally. It will not wreck the economy, and I don't think it will even wreck anyone's life as an individual earner.
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Here are the facts behind minimum wage in America (as of 2005, the most recent data I could find- Chuck):
4.3 million: Number of Americans who have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office
$5.15: Federal minimum wage
26%: How much the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage has eroded since 1979
0: Number of times minimum wage has increased since 1997
7: Number of times Congress has increased its own pay since 1997
$0: How much more a year people earning minimum wage earn today compared to 1997
$28,500: How much more a year members of Congress make today compared to 1997
$10,700: Amount a person making minimum wage will earn in a year
$5,000: Amount below the poverty level working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year at minimum wage will leave a family of three
7,300,000: Number of workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage
72%: Percentage of adult workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage
1,800,000: Number of parents with kids under the age of 18 who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage
11 million: Number of jobs added to the economy in the four years after the last minimum wage hike
$8.70: Amount minimum wage would have to be today to have the same purchasing power it had in 1968
2.5 years: Amount of health care for two children which could be bought by raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25
86%: Percentage of Americans who support raising the federal minimum wage
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An estimated 13.0 million workers (10% of the workforce) would receive an increase in their hourly wage rate if the minimum wage were raised from $5.15 to $7.25 by 2009. Of these workers, 5.6 million workers (4% of the workforce) currently earn less than $7.25 and would be directly affected by an increase. The additional 7.4 million workers (6% of the workforce) earning slightly above the minimum would also be likely to benefit from an increase due to "spillover effects."
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$5.15 today is the equivalent of only $3.95 in 1995 — lower than the $4.25 minimum wage level before the 1996-97 increase.
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thrash;187589 wrote:
You guys keep making these claims and then not substantiating them. Abolishing the minimum wage will NOT wreck the economy. We've already established that only 2% of people are actually earning minimum wage as it is. The bottom income earners are not the engine of economic activity, and lowering existing wages will not destroy consumption.Removing the minimum wage will allow more people to get jobs legally. It will not wreck the economy, and I don't think it will even wreck anyone's life as an individual earner.
But you haven't substantiated your claim either. Who is to say that a lot of employers that are currently paying minimum wage (or slightly higher) wouldn't lower the wages of their existing employees? There is no safeguard for the worker in that regard. I'm willing to bet that even at my level of my company that I would take a major pay cut (or no increases at least) if minimum wage was eliminated (and I make a fairly good living). How can I substantiate this? I can't....but neither can you. The snippets I've included above illustrate that MILLIONS of employees (2% seems like too small of a number) are being paid the minimum of what their employers are required to pay....imagine if they weren't required to pay anything (1920's labor comes to mind....people building dams for $1/day....substantiated from family history of my grandfather making $1/day while building a dam to create a man made lake near Balta, ND)
IF the minimum wage were to be eliminated, I think it is safe to say that rural america would completely disappear. Min wage earners would move to larger cities to earn money....the business owners would follow suit....leaving the farmers as the lone income earners out there. As the would have limited places to sell/buy products, many of them would pack it up as well and move to larger towns leaving us with a shortage of food producers (its happening already) OR more corporate farmers.
Again, I like the "idea" of marketing yourself at fair market value to your employer, I just don't think it will work. Please give me one example of any country that is having the success that this country is that has no minimum wage.
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Chuck, you are giving me a headache with all those stats put together by some pro-minimum wage entity. I like how they put things out that make no sense whatsoever:
- 7,300,000: Number of workers who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.
*Well duh, what are they talking about? If you raise the minimum wage to what? If you raise the minimum wage to $40/hr I'd bet that it would be a heckuva lot more than 7,300,000 people who would benefit from it, you think? I could prove rediculous of about 3/4 of the stats you posted because it is meaningless drivel put out by some left wing web site.
:icon_geek:
DaveH
'94 Supra- 7.77 @ 176mph -
And the fact that the definition of being in poverty or not well off includes families who ONLY own 1 or 2 vehicles, ONLY have digital cable/satellite and not the other and plenty other amenities that nobody really needs to survive. Statistics like those posted are pretty worthless IMO.
One I especially love is
[quote
86%: Percentage of Americans who support raising the federal minimum wage[/quote]
As if they are all experts on whether or not a raise in the minimum wage would actually benefit them.This is the same group of people who for the most part supported the war in Iraq/Afghanistan and are now saying we never should have gone there.
Also I see a nice little flaw in that statistic...
$10,700: Amount a person making minimum wage will earn in a year
This brings us back to the question of how many people actually earn minimum wage? Does the statistic of this number include 15 year olds working their first job? Does the statistic show how many of those people are single vs married?These are like the stats that also label people with Masters/PhD's who aren't working in a field generally accepted as a Masters/PhD field as underemployed or working below their means. Oh the PhD is only earning $40,000 a year? boo hoo.
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