Abolish Minimum Wage

[color=#2e1a6b]The lack of a desire to work is caused by unemployment benefits and other social programs, but that's for a different thread.

While I believe that we may be naturally inclined to take the easy way out(IE: Unemployment benefits and social programs), I think the social impact of these programs is overblown.

Example: My mom's worked a decade+ at UPS, as she was layed off, she used her 401K. It barely afforded a 2,000 dollar carpet! Food stamps and other benefits barely average to around 150 bucks, and we think people are surviving on this?

These programs do not cause a lack of desire to work, more than they do kill the human spirit period. If these programs actually worked, the families would be supported and stabilized so as to actually be able to economically pursue a job.

They actually incline for a person to hurry up and get a job, because barely living is just utterly unacceptable,

Excuse me, but my dad was on unemployment for a while, and he was looking for work during that entire time.

Lelouch seems to me, and this is just an inference from his statements about unemployment benefits, to be the kind of person who believes in the concept of a "Welfare queen". That is, a woman who just has a bunch of kids in order to get more welfare money and doesn't take care of her kids or look for a job.

If this is so Lelouch, I'll like you to know that this concept is a myth.

That's not true. My work place is dealing with a guy who quit without notice and then tried to get us to sign unofficial paperwork for welfare that he no longer works there. Paperwork with a blank space to fill in for the county, and a signature that was supposed to be notarized. We said we wouldn't sign it until it was filled out properly and weeks later we got a call from him and his "boss" at a landscaping company that we need to write a letter that he no longer works there. That "boss" one of our coworkers knew and contacted the day after and he had no idea what we were talking about. Yes he worked there, but he didn't need us to fill anything out. He's trying to rip off the system to get benefits while working, and even tried to do so after he willingly quit.

Do not mistake that there are lazy awful awful people out there. However, there are many people who genuinely need help in a tough situation. It's not right to lump people in all one category, but to call someone who purposely sits on their ass and collect benefits a myth is naive. Hell a woman who won the lottery in one state just died from drug overdose and she publicly admitted previously that despite winning her million dollars or whatever it was, she'd remain on food stamps and welfare. What kind of shit is that?

As for minimal wage, I remember when I was 16 I was working my first job and minimal wage was raised in my state. At the same time the cost of food of everything in the restaurant was raised too. As well as all the groceries in the store, etc. So even though I got 'a raise' I really didn't, because everything else inflated in price. Defeats the purpose, no?

I think we're tackling the wrong problem by saying wages need to be a certain height in order to live. I think the root of the problem is money inflation and that needs to be dealt with. With money increasing in value it can be spent on more things with prices of everything else going down.

I agree to a point with the op, and I also want to mention what he brought up with discrimination and civil liberties in place to protect minorities. Some of these laws are extremely counter productive.

You have a law in place where a business/establishment must have a certain percentage of different minorities in place. A perfect example would be where my coworker used to work, she used to manage apartments. By law they had to keep a certain percentage of minorities in that apartment complex and could not become an all white neighborhood. It would be terrible if they discriminated against minorities and only allowed a certain color of race live there. This was a neighborhood that rent was on a sliding scale based on your wage - so naturally they usually had a waiting list for this community.

They always struggled getting enough minorities in this neighborhood due to the demographics of the area, and sometimes they'd have months and months of a backlog - but if a black person came in they had to push them to the front of the line because they NEEDED them to live there to appease the government laws. I think that is absolutely 100% backwards. They're being treated a certain way because of the color of their skin - yes it's in their favor, but is that not what Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr protested against? It's not about the color of your skin, it's about your character.

In these days if word gets out that an establishment is racist or discriminatory then they risk losing their business. Social Media is a beast and it doesn't take long. You don't need government agencies running ramped making sure percentages are equal and with specific races of people in an establishment.

[color=#2e1a6b]Then your dad was not among the people who lack a desire to work.



[color=#2e1a6b]I've never even heard of this idea before.

My opinion about this is influenced by the people who tell my dad straight up "I have no interest in working, but I need to find 2 people hiring in order to keep my benefits"

Answer: Commuinsm. Not USSR state capitalism bullshit, real communsim

The general idea behind a minimum wage is that employees are being paid enough to meet the basic standard of living.



What kind of human can actually think like that and still call themselves human. People like you aren't job creators, they're job destroyers. Anything that resembles human emotion or empathy is considered an expense. You falsely "bare the burden" of creating jobs and employing the masses, yet the only thing you care about is making money. You have no conscience or sense of respect for other people. If you can lower production costs by firing people and replacing them with machines or sweat shops, you jump at the chance.

Good luck with that.

Before I say anything I'll point out that I'm actually from the UK, not the US, but the basic ideas still stand, and our minimum wage is largely comparable to most States (although the average cost of living is much higher here).


In this country, minimum wage is simply not enough to live on. There's a reason that there's a legally recognised difference between a 'minimum wage' and a 'living wage', which is the minimum amount required to be able to afford the most meagre rent and bills in your area with no luxuries and low quality food. In most areas this difference is between £1-£2/hour (in London it's higher than this). This means that, in most areas, anybody earning only minimum wage must apply for subsidiary government welfare just to be able to afford to pay their bills and buy food.

So what happens if employers are allowed to pay their employees even less than the minimum wage? Employers may be able to higher a greater number of employees, but do you really think that they'll cut their prices just because they're getting more work done for the same price? They'll just take a bigger profit margin and laugh to the bank. And even accounting for those that do decrease the cost of their goods, the cost of rent and other bills beyond purchasable essentials will still outweigh the now-even-lower average income.

Simply put, fewer people will be unemployed, but fewer people still will be able to afford the basic cost of living, meaning: 1) more homelessness, hunger and general poverty, 2) more people resorting to illicit means of generating income alongside their minimal legal earnings, and 3) an increase in government welfare reliance and payouts.

The last point is particularly interesting. If the impoverished working classes are having to be subsidised more money from the government, just who is going to put that money back into the government? Well with the poor working class now earning even less than the minimum required amount to pay income tax, an increase in tax must fall on those able to afford it: the employers whose profit margins have increased by cutting their employees' wages.

Eliminating minimum wage would ultimately be a short-sighted means to put more cash in the pockets of already exploitative employers who, ironically, would end up paying more out in increased taxes to pay for the expenses of an unchanged, if not lower, standard of living for their own employees.

Not to mention, as someone who relies on my extremely basic wage to survive, if you took that away I might not be able to scrape by at all. You wouldn't want me to have to beg for change on the streets would you? ;)

Yeah I know people who do this. However, it is important to state that while Welfare queens do exist, women are not the only ones who take advantage of social welfare programs, men do it as well. Furthermore, it is also important to know that not everyone who takes food stamps, welfare, etc. has this attitude. That being said, I attribute the existence of this individuals to social loafing.

It's also not limited to just welfare, I know plenty of "students" enrolled in either community colleges and/or for-profit institutions that receive financial aid and monthly/bi-weekly checks in the mail despite not needing that much help. I knew of an individual who was receiving $7000 a month in financial aid (from the government, not private scholarships) to attend a community college, despite only needing about $3000 if that.

I would like to comment that most workers(at least in the US) make more than minimum wage and that the ones who make minimum wage are young people



I'd like to ask why the cost of living is so much higher in the UK since that seams to be a big part of why you would be against getting rid of minimum wage.



I'd like to ask what better way may there be besides greed(the profit motive)to motivate people?

i support capitolism, but not its advance at the cost of lowering peoples quality of life, minimum wage should be enough for one person to support themselves and not to live in hell. These laws were put into place during the industrial revolution because the people who can give you jobs can set the wage and screw their employes.

A mixture of high import costs associated with being a small island nation, insanely high energy prices, and conservative government. All these contribute to generally higher taxes too. Still, as I understand it, the cost of living is becoming consistently higher in pretty much every State, and the general progression in my earlier post is still applicable.



One would hope that concern for human life would come before individual greed...

So basically you have employers' point of view. It seems promising from the start, but now what I see is you trying to get more and more profit, and using personal anecdote did have an effect, but doesn't affect my view on minimum wage.

That minimum wage diagram you copied of the internet is similar to a diagram of price floor.

That aside, a government has to weigh both options. Governments can't only side with the employers and focus ONLY on abolishing unemployments by removing minimum wage. If removing minimum wage means abolishing unemployments BUT reducing standard of living by a significant margin, it's quite a hefty price to pay.

I understand where you are coming from, but you can't blindly just focus on one side of a theory before actually applying. You're gonna make a terrible President.

Welp. There goes the last of my faith in humanity.

I see a lot of people that are against abolishing minimum wage here but it seems to me that you all have the impression that there are tons of people working at minimum wage. Lets look at that shall we? In the US ~ 130 million people have jobs but only ~ 3.5 million work at or below the minimum wage. Of those 3.5 million over 90% are younger than 25. Now I ask is there anything mysterious about young people starting at the bottom?

If employers were going to pay their people as little as possible than why out 130 milion jobs are only ~3% of them making at or below minimum wage(In the US. For your own nation you'll have to look up your own statistics.)?





Actually the first minimum wage law in the US anyway came about in the 1930's. It was only for construction workers it was called the Davis-Bacon act.



Conservative government = higher taxes? Imports Don't cost high because your an Island nation. How does high energy prices lead to higher taxes?



That's a nice sentiment but what I was asking was what other way gets better results than greed consistently?



Ok how does one go about increasing the standard of living for everybody?

You can't do it for everybody. Doesn't mean you have to abolish minimum wage so everyone can get a job.