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General Category => General Talk => Topic started by: Faust on January 31, 2011, 01:12:19 pm
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A minimum wage is a delightful concept on its surface as it represents a legal guarantee that a worker won't be paid any less than a certain amount for an hour of work. Surely a legal minimum can only be a positive thing?
Some people believe that the minimum wage limits overall earnings for those on society's lowest salaries, as it effectively sets a low-bar for companies to aim for. This can mean the retail and service industry earn ONLY this amount and never any more. However, without this low-bar in place, who can say if the employees would earn even less?
In the 80s here in the UK the government set up "youth training schemes", which was effectively rounding up young adults with no jobs and taking them to clean parks etc for pennies a day. One conservative MP is renowned for paying a gardner 85p a week.
What are your feelings on the minimum wage? Does your country have one? Is it too low or too high? Should companies be free to pay whatever they wish without federal involvement, or do we need federal involvement to ensure that people are paid fairly? Is like six quid for an hour of your life a fair wage? Should there be a maximum wage?
WHAT YOU THINK?
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Minimum wage is definitely a good thing. And this is coming from someone who only makes 20 cents above the min himself. As you said, without a limit in place, companies would be free to go as low as they feel. I work for a very cheap boss. She spends the very least amount possible on the equipment that we use in our everyday workings. So I can only imagine what she would pay us if she had the freedom to set her own wages.
It's kinda humorous when young people complain about only making $7.25 an hour, considering 4 years ago when I started my current job the min wage was $5.15
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Well I was thinking about this lately, the UK minimum wage specifically (i think it's £5.93 an hour for grown ups). that's...pretty low, really, isn't it?! i think the US has a similar level of wages and before the £ crashed it was even lower in real terms.
i mean you can live on it, or i can, but i go around town and i see things like COFFEE + PANINI = ONLY 5.50!!! and I just about want to puke. That's an hour of your life for a coffee and a panini. That's that hour gone, now. All gone. It probably wasn't even a good panini. Also, the coffee and the panini costs about 90p to make and serve together. Also you don't want to see how they were storing it before they stuck it on a plate and put it in front of you.
but you don't have to live like that. you don't need to eat out, and if you're working on minimum wage, alone, paying rent and bills for yourself, you don't have the money or time to do it. but you probably do it anyway because these places are all you can find and you've only got 30 minutes for lunch or something.
this is a very small minded post so far. there are a lot of things i want to say about this, but i guess this was bothering me today when i was out looking for something for lunch.
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It doesn't immediately make sense to me that minimum wage sets a low bar for companies to aspire to because if wage competitiveness was actually something that had a big effect on what companies paid their employees, wouldn't it just start at that low bar and then rise gradually as companies try to lure employees? Do they even have to lure employees - I mean, every position is inundated with CVs, right? I don't think that sounds like it makes much sense.
I'm sure employers can still pretty easily pay workers less than minimum wage by going cash in hand, and I don't know how much it really helps for things like undocumented workers who will probably take anything they can get anyway. I'm pretty ignorant about this stuff right now, obviously, but I think it's really important to understand so if anybody wants to come in here and take me to school then I would like that.
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I think it depends on the cost of living in the place you live in.
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It really depends on what it costs for you to live as to whether or not minimum wage is a good thing.
In some respects it's a good thing because it stops companies from paying a couple of bucks an hour, but on the other hand it allows companies to not pay what the position is worth. The minimum wage in NZ is $12.50, which is something like $9 USD or 6 pounds for the Brits, which is relatively good but everything is fucking expensive here. Especially video games. We pay an equivalent of $80 USD for new release games here (which is why I resort to Steam, mostly) because publishers like to fuck us.
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Also you don't want to see how they were storing it before they stuck it on a plate and put it in front of you.
grilling a panini in your punani
this is a good point though I hate like stores like Target which isn't that supposed to be on Wal-Mart level but they have like some pasta shit and they just throw some random basil seasoning on it LEAF and suddenly LEAVES make it cost $8.00 or something. Also Wanchai Ferry is there even any RICE in there??? (rice the cheapest thing in the world you can buy it by answering random vocabulary questions online) fuuuuuuuuuu Wanchai Ferry just add water and meat and rice and seasoning the only thing enclosed in that chinese box is a fortune cookie saying hahaha dumb yuppie americans too lazy to drive a block for Chinese food that costs just as much
isn't 5.93 minimum wage a lot with the exchange rate
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End the wage system, overcome the value-form
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End the wage system, overcome the value-form
i've forgotten it all. i'm a limp limb.
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isn't 5.93 minimum wage a lot with the exchange rate
right now, no, because the pound plummeted a couple of years ago against every currency i've checked. before that i think that comparatively average or above.
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for one it irritates me that stuff like this is a subject of conversation (in america anyway) while the real shit gets buried. not that it's not an important subject but idk I'm just so fed up with Political Shit in my own field that something like minimum wage is a chore for me to think about
actually no that's not all of it. it's that there are so many different ways to improve peoples lives, and believe it or not throwin money at em isn't one of them. it's actually kind of absurd
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quantifying how much someones work is worth is pretty arbritrary. working a 40 hour week in most jobs will leave you just as spent as in any other job, most differences in pay really aren't 'justified' and it gets really gross when people think that they make more because they work harder.
since there's no upper limit to how much you can earn a minimum wage really just sets inflation levels etc.
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Isn't the minimum wage in America really awful? IIRC it's like half of what we have in Australia.
Anyway yeah it's definetly a good thing to have, there are a lot of cheapskate employers out there.
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There's a federal minimum wage and then it also varies by state because some are higher. I think it's 8.67 in my state but ours is the highest in the country iirc
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I don't like it. I can see why it's there, but I'd happily do some little jobs for a pound an hour or whatnot. Minimum wage disallows that freedom, and so gets rid of the hundreds of tinyjobs that people can do while they are otherwise unemployed. I can see how it could be exploited, but it's still silly.
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I don't like it. I can see why it's there, but I'd happily do some little jobs for a pound an hour or whatnot. Minimum wage disallows that freedom, and so gets rid of the hundreds of tinyjobs that people can do while they are otherwise unemployed. I can see how it could be exploited, but it's still silly.
go on mturk then
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As I understand it, if you're only selling sweat then you're exempt from paying minimum wage
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I don't like it. I can see why it's there, but I'd happily do some little jobs for a pound an hour or whatnot. Minimum wage disallows that freedom, and so gets rid of the hundreds of tinyjobs that people can do while they are otherwise unemployed. I can see how it could be exploited, but it's still silly.
yeah and what's the deal with child labor being illegal??? We're denying the little tykes a chance to pull themselves up by their tiny little bootstraps! It's just plain silly
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it'd mean instead of one guy doing several menial tasks you'd have 5 guys doing a menial task each, for a pound an hour or whatnot
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it'd mean instead of one guy doing several menial tasks you'd have 5 guys doing a menial task each, for a pound an hour or whatnot
And instead of one guy being able to support himself you've got five guys who can't.
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actually no that's not all of it. it's that there are so many different ways to improve peoples lives, and believe it or not throwin money at em isn't one of them. it's actually kind of absurd
it has been pointed out to me that this could be taken multiple ways. what I meant to say is that it's absurd to think that money is going to solve any problems in an effective manner when money is one of the problem's own devices. if you're thinking about helping or protecting the poor, this really isn't the path you should be taking. of course at the present I think it's pretty obvious a decently high minimum wage is a necessary bandaid, and the only real argument is whether or not it should be higher or lower. I'm not too interested in that conversation--isn't this all figured out by statistics and number-crunching and things that have very little to do with ideals or anything truly meaningful anyway
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i think there needs to be a MAXIMUM wage.
also we should get that cocksucker andrew jackson off the twenty and put leon trotsky's wonderful mug on there, ice axe and all so nobody gets too fucking comfortable in case i think up something better
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woah woah woah don't go talkin bad about andrew jackson. motherfucker was so full of lead from gunfights that he rattled like a bag of marbles.
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KANYE WEST: Andrew Jackson doesn't care about black people.
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A maximum wage wouldn't help as the corporations would just be holding back all the money making the companies richer. The extra money wouldn't actually go anywhere useful.
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yes you hit the nail on the head! :saltstachethumbsup:
imo there's a huge problem with minimum wage when it is INCREASED and that's that companies don't have to match that.
to explain better: there have been TWO instances in the past five or six years or whatever when i was working at a minimum wage job, and then i got a raise (yay!). but then right after i got the raise, the state's minimum wage was increased, to be pretty much what i was making with the raise. my salary wasn't increased proportionally: in other words, the increase in minimum wage canceled out my raise, so that i was still making as much as any newhire. and apparently lots of large companies will INTENTIONALLY give out raises right before states increase minimum wage just to do this and screw people out of getting legitimate raises.
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That IS a problem for like yourself, and I'd be annoyed to, but surely it's better that EVERYONE gets that little boost out of poverty?
Companies doing the shitty thing you describe are pretty disgusting though. I can see a parallel with the story of Ananias from Acts (sorry I have been teaching about WEALTH, CHARITY AND POVERTY this week), which is terrible considering that dada reminds me that the right wing in the US consists of right wing Christians in a weird alliance with neocapitalist businessmen. Surely there is CONFLICT over issues like false charity?
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yeah pretty much. jesus essentially preached socialism
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And yet like most people DON'T give to charity. I mean I know quite a few do, but I'm pretty sure that the people of the UK don't give as much as we should. We're like the world's fifth leading economy, yet I know that Saudi Arabia gives more as a percentage of GDP than we do by a long ways :(
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That IS a problem for like yourself, and I'd be annoyed to, but surely it's better that EVERYONE gets that little boost out of poverty?
Companies doing the shitty thing you describe are pretty disgusting though. I can see a parallel with the story of Ananias from Acts (sorry I have been teaching about WEALTH, CHARITY AND POVERTY this week), which is terrible considering that dada reminds me that the right wing in the US consists of right wing Christians in a weird alliance with neocapitalist businessmen. Surely there is CONFLICT over issues like false charity?
Does it really surprise you that the religious right wing is aligned with the interests of capital? When have the teachings of christ ever prevented the church from supporting reactionary politics?
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umm pretty sure jesus mentioned something about bootstraps SOMEWHERE in that bigass book, geeze -_-
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Does it really surprise you that the religious right wing is aligned with the interests of capital? When have the teachings of christ ever prevented the church from supporting reactionary politics?
Well it doesn't SURPRISE me when I think about it, but it's still pretty shocking. The majority of Christians in the US are from non-Catholic sects, a lot of them evangelical, presumably split from the church due to like PAPAL GREED and shit. It's pure hypocrisy to then go on to support big business over the principles of Jesus. I mean, Judaism doesn't really contain any condemnation of wealth - in fact, wealth is encouraged as a means to do good - but there are a LOT of rules about how you need to look after the "stranger" and help them out, to the extent that we're commanded to give 10% of our earnings to charity, with an encouragement to give 20%. I count this as net rather than gross, but even so.
The catamites...wow. Just wow...
That is a great video (hooray Moore) but why is Jesus played by Viggo Mortisen?
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As of today, Mexico's minimum wage varies from $4.8usd to $5.15usd per day (depending on the zone).
The minimum wage supposedly guarantees the minimum monthly income for any person to have a decent life. Problem is, it guarantees the individual well-being, but not his or her family. Moreover, several rights are not completly guranteed by the state which strongly compromises the minimum wage purpose.
In Mexico's case, it's far too low. Specially now that several basic foods prices have increased because of a rise in gasoline prices. In México's case, I think there should be a maximum wage in state-related jobs.
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Food prices are insane. I work at a grocery store so I see it first hand. Just 2 weeks ago the price of a gallon of milk went from $3.09 to $4.09 overnight. And it's stayed there ever since.
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isnt mexico essentially a failed state by now?
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isnt mexico essentially a failed state by now?
Arguably. As of 2010, Mexico ranks place 96 (1 being Somalia and 177 Norway) in the Failed States Index.
I'm no expert in the field. I could say that Mexico right now fails under that category mainly because of the Mexican Drug War. There are, indeed, parts in which the goverment has lost control.