Labor Pains In Colorado

Single parents aren't a family?
A spouse that is unable to work, for whatever reason, suddenly makes them not a family? Assuming both get 40 hours, they may be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment. Of course, that assumes they don't eat food, don't buy any toys or clothes for themselves or their kid(s), have free transportation to everywhere they need to go, don't need electricity, water, heat, or a phone...

Why not? Assuming you can't work due to a disability. What if there just aren't any jobs in your area? What if the only jobs that will hire you will pay you less than it would cost to put your child in daycare? Or live in an economically depressed area.But even if they are, you're willing to punish the children because their parents are "retarded" or "irresponsible"? But not free. If all your money pays rent and utilities, there's no such thing as "affordable" clothing. I have no idea what this is. Yeah, I see you making a lot of them in this post alone.

When people are foced to try just that, don't you think it should be? Aside from the fact that there are some teenagers who are trying to raise families, there is an easy solution: a tiered minimum wage from 15 (or youngest age someone can work) through 18, at which point the full adult minimum is enforced. There is an argument that it would cause inflation, making everything cost more, thus making the wage increase disappear, or necessitate an "arms race" of wage increases followed by cost increases followed by wage increases ad infinitum.I'm not an economist, but that seems to be bullshit when corporations can post billions or trillions of dollars in profit. Now, maybe it will affect the small businesses, but tax breaks or incentives might be able to offset the "burden" of paying your employees enough to be able to survive somewhat comfortably on.

You could but if you allow parents to raise their children as they wish (within the law) then making them go to Sunday school, and being forced to work a job that doesn't pay enough to feed, clothe, and care for children is a much different issue. My response was to Arty's saying that a single income family, with two parents would necessarily be receiving some sort of disability pay. The minimum wage may not be affecting the unemployed parent, but it certainly does affect the employed one. In my scenario, they were. They were realizing that the consequences of working would mean a net loss of income, which is a pretty poor situation to be in.If you mean they shouldn't have children, then you're pretty much consigning most people to not having children, as it is possible for just about anyone to lose a job due to unforeseen circumstances. When did education enter into this. There are plenty of educated people who are forced to work a minimum wage job and raise their family on that. My wife has a Master's degree and I have a Bachelor's degree. We're both working jobs that only require a high school diploma because there are no other jobs available for us. We're lucky enough to be making more than minimum wage, but I can't imagine any family trying to get by on less than we make. We pretty much live paycheck to paycheck as it is. That would be great, if they had any say in it. That would require stronger unions, and the trend in this country is the opposite direction. There will always be someone willing to do your job for less thsan you're getting paid to do it. Without the minimum wage, pay would drop drastically. Well, you could sell 20 hamburgers. Or the "kid" flipping them could be making the 16-year-old minimum wage. Or the minimum wage could be less than $20/hr, but still more than $7.25. I used to work at a grocery store. It helped me pay my way through college. It was and is a union shop. I got paid very well. Starting wage was almost a dollar over minimum wage, and I eventually got up to close to $15/hr. The prices at this store are less than the cost at almost every other store in the area. They do this by buying in bluk, and having a single warehouse in southern WI and then shipping the items to the stores around WI and IL.In fact, my cousin and I made up a "shopping list" of the things we buy most commonly. The cost of shopping here ended up being less than even shopping at Wal-Mart. So higher wages doesn't translate to higher prices if the person in charge of the business is smart and efficient.

Education doesn't necessarily result in "skills." If you get a liberal arts degree, then try to market that in the business world, you'll get doors slammed in your face faster than you'd ever have thought possible.It seems more and more like the only higher education that matters any more is business or a tech college. This is vastly different from how it was in my parent's generation, and not how college was sold to me. Had I known then what I know now, I would have made different choices in my college career. Smaller towns or rural areas. Unemployment is temporary, and isn't great income even so. As for disability, they tend to require you have, you know, a disability. We've considered it, but for one thing, our family is here, our friends are here. It costs money to move. And my wife has been applying around the country in her field, but there aren't tons of openings, and they tend to have very low starting pay. She has back issues, and would need either more pay, or health insurance right away instead of trying to suffer through 6 months or a year. You mean voting in people who will raise the minimum wage?Otherwise, how does an elected official have any say on how much a person gets paid? I agree, in an ideal situation, minimum wage would go to people starting out in the workforce, and by the time they have a family, they'd have received promotions and raises commensurate with their changing status in life. Unfortunately, that's not the way it actually works. Well, there's an easy solution to the rat problem in that abandoned building down by the docks... But most fast food places make more than $20 an hour in sales, by far, and I'm not advocating a $20/hr minimum wage. Than what? There are a lot of people emplyed at the store. It's open 24 hours, so there's three shifts. There are a lot of younger people working part-time. It may not have "greeters" like Wal-Mart, but to be honest, I never understood their use anyway.

If it just affected the person who made the mistake, you might have a point there. I wouldn't agree with it, but I could understand it. The issue is families, people with kids who didn't make the mistake, are the ones being affected. If you want to hire Dude B and pay him less than he needs to live, then you probably shouldn't be able to hire anyone. Jobs are only a good thing if they do two things, provide a needed or desired service AND pay the employee enough to live a comfortable life.If Dude B can live on a lower payment than Dude A, for whatever reason, then great, he's going to get more than he feels he needs.You said you're not against minimum wage, just raising it. If the cost of living goes up, the minimum wage should as well, otherwise, the minimum wage isn't doing anything any more. The point of the minimum wage was to protect people who couldn't afford to underbid everyone else just to get a job, but now we're at the point where people can't afford to underbid people to get a job, even if the job is paying a bit more than minimum wage. So, as it is, it isn't doing what it was supposed to do. The options then become, leaving it alone and ineffective, removing it, or adjusting it so it can do its job. To me, the worst option is the second one.

No, it isn't. But I do think there should be a little help for those who have made mistakes or whose parents made mistakes. A minimum standard of living should be granted to people based purely on the fact that they're human beings. I include a livable wage, medical care, and education in that minimum. I don't think it should be the job that someone is relegated to due to conditions, but unfortunately, sometimes it is. But which jobs are those? There are jobs you don't think people should try to raise a family by doing, but what do you say to those who have no other option? Tough luck? Again, I agree that this shouldn't be the case, but especially during the past recession, these were the jobs that were available. People can't just stop raising a family because the economy decides to take a nose dive. One of the major reasons put forth in creating a minimum wage was the prevalence of sweatshops, where people were paid very poorly for doing work, and the fact that people were willing to do work for which they got paid very little. If Bob wants to have a job to start a family, but Joe doesn't want a family and can work for half the price of Bob, what's Bob supposed to do? Should he just give up on having a family and agree to work at the same pay as Joe? If a company can find people to work for less, those are the people they will hire. The minimum wage, in part, protects those who can't afford to be paid less.The problem is, when many people can't afford to be paid minimum wage, you're back to the same issue, only now the companies can claim they're just following the law. I doubt there is anyone out there who wants to raise a family on minimum wage. The fact remains that for many, that is the only option. Govermental policies should reflect the actual state of things, even if they work to change that state, rather than stubbornly saying that things aren't how they should be.

I'm not advocating a high minimum wage, just a higher one. If nothing else, it should keep up with inflation. If $7.25 was good enough (I'm not sure it was, but let's just say it was) ten years ago, then if inflation has caused prices to rise, it stands to reason that it is not good enough any more. And teenagers can be paid a lower minimum, as I suggested. The issue is that there are few or no jobs that are done exclusively by teenagers. You still give an employer a choice, if he wants to pay people less, he can hire teenagers. If he wants someone older, perhaps more mature or trustworthy, he can hire an adult and then pay them more for that experience and trustworthiness. Being able to raise your family (or support yourself) is the sole reason to get a job. What other purpose is there to have a minimum? What should the minimum be? Enough to almost raise a family? Enough to buy McDonald's once a day for food? Dark Oni would love that situation.What to you, should the minimum be judged by, if it's not enough to support yourself and your family? I'm not aware of any time the economy has been adversely affected by raising the minimum wage. In fact, if people are getting paid more, they can buy more, and the economy does better. It's sort of the rising tide raising all boats thing. If you're a business owner, presumptively you're trying to sell a service or good. If you (and every other business owner) are paying your employees more, then you should be able to sell more of your goods and/or services because people have the ability to afford it. All I can see it doing is giving the employer a larger profit margin. For most big corporations, that profit marghin could be smaller without significantly harming them. For smaller businesses, I suggested tax incentives or breaks, which could be set up to ameliorate the lost profits due to higher wages. If they have friends and family who are willing and able to help, they can do that. Again, you're assuming everyone has that.Forcing people to give up their family because they lost their jobs and can't find better work than flipping burgers is just plain wrong. I don't want to live in a society that thinks this is a fine solution to the problem.And I'm not advocating that we make this a place with no losers. I'm simply trying to make a place where losing isn't the most likely outcome when you decide to have a child. Part of being in a society is accepting that everyone will work together to make things better for everyone. That means some will sacrifice, and some will benefit by others' sacrifice. I have no problem with that, and prefer it to the 'everyone out for him/herself' model that seems to be so loved by many in this country.

There are two responses to this. 1) Then pay teenagers the same amount as adults, i.e. the amount it costs to raise a family at 40 hours of work a week. ABE: The issues is not paying adults more it's paying teenagers less.2) I sort of said this when I mentioned tax breaks/incentives to small businesses to cover the costs of paying higher wages.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

Good link. You'll notice that minimum wage is the most applicable aspect of the guaranteed minimum income, along with a safety net, generally referred to as welfare.The other aspects, pensions (or SSI) and student grants and loans, only apply to the elderly and college students.If you're advocating the "Basic Income" approach, where the state pays out an income to everyone that is enough to live on, it sounds gtreat in theory, but I'm curious where the government would get the funds for this.

quote:

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There is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it.

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This would mean that taxes, of some sort, would need to go way up. If the US population is 313,218,000 people, and we assume that say $15,000 is considered the minimum needed to live on (this is probably low), that comes to $4,698,270,000,000, or more than 4.5 trillion dollars.

And 1/3 of that could be paid to all Americans? It sounds like it would be great, I fully support the concept, but it seems like it would be impossible to enact in this country. Republicans will campaign against it, conservatives in and out of politics will be against it, libertarians will scream about socialism.Raising the minimum wage would be much easier (though not easy). That's not to say we couldn't try to work towards a day that a guaranteed income could be enacted, but in the mean time, we need to do what we can to help people who need help now.

The link you posted mentioned a guaranteed income paid to all, regardless of need. That was what I was questioning. If you mean just paying to people who need it, then you're talking welfare, which is even more controversial than a minimum wage. Then why would someone work the job? Why would you say there are any jobs so worthless that they shouldn't pay a subsistence wage, but so worthwhile that someone needs to work them 40 hours every week?I would say that just taking 40 hours of someone's time every week is worth paying them enough to live on.

Try it. It's hard on the back...especially if you're tall (or if you're short). At the grocery store I worked at, the checkers were supposed do keep to a minimum number of items scanned per minute. The faster the checker goes, the faster the bagger needs to go.The baggers are also the ones who have to run back into the store to do a price check if the customer disputes the charge, or if it won't scan. They also have to run to the other end of the store to get a cart if the bagged groceries end up requiring a second cart.And yeah, like Phat said, baggers are also often the pool of people that are chosen among for the cart duties.

His solution is pretty socialist. It seems to be an expanded welfare system, where people are given money from the government to complement their income (or lack thereof) such that they have enough to raise a family on. This would allow the minimum wage to be lower, allowing businesses to hire people without breaking their banks.I think this solution sounds good, but it would end up costing the businsses anyway, as the revenue would have to come through an increase in taxes or other governmental income.

So, if someone is instrumental in bringing in a $300,000,000 deal, he should be paid close to that amount?If that's the case, I'm severely underpaid.