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| Photo by jpmatth via Flickr |
Minimum wage in the U.S. is pretty low compared to the standard of living. I know, most of you have probably already realized this. The thing that surprised me was that federal minimum wage has not changed since 2009. It is still $7.25 an hour and basic expenses such as food, utilities, etc are increasing in cost every year. Not to mention the obvious fact that we are in a "Great Recession" where jobs are scarce and getting a home loan is harder than it used to be. My home state of Georgia, along with Wyoming, has the lowest state minimum wage at $5.15 an hour. However in most cases the federal minimum wage applies and not the state minimum wage, but why should the state minimum wage even be as low as $5.15?
Another big issue facing the average American in this economy is that it's very much an employers market. Employers can afford to be picky when it comes to choosing employees and the current employees feel they are privileged to even have a job and therefore put up with working conditions they normally wouldn't have to. I know, I know...life isn't easy and working has always been hard and employers are always mean to their employees and we should just suck it up and stop complaining. I get that. I have no aversion to hard work....well, maybe I do have a little bit of an aversion but I'd still put in the effort. That doesn't mean I'm not justified in being a bit frustrated.
I suppose it's this type of frustration that leads many young people to camp out in local parks and get arrested as some sort of hippie initiation rite. I have no qualms with the aims of the Occupy Wall street movement and other spin-off movements (even though those aims are often vague ideas instead of bulleted points but don't try to regulate our thoughts man) . What I'm not so sure of is the method to the madness. The Occupy movement wants to overhaul the entire political and economic system which can't be done by camping out. A large enough protest can lead to changes in widely unpopular policies but something else has to happen for change on a revolutionary scale to occur. To be honest I'm just not ready for a revolution. I guess I'm a little past the age where the idea of a coup d'etat is appealing to me. If I was an idealistic young person looking to create change on a national level I suppose the first thing I'd do is to make sure I educate myself on the issues, vote, and encourage others to vote as well. If I was unemployed and in need of work I think a better way to spend my time would be looking for work instead of camping out in a park all day and all night long. I also think that a big social statement could be made in the form of organizing, not to camp out in a park, but to volunteer at a soup kitchen or in some form of community outreach program.
I know I'm being hypocritical here as I'm not a member of an outreach program and I'm not actively involved in any political organizations. I do intend to vote on issues that I feel are important and I feel obligated to educate myself on the issues even though it sometimes feels like I'm getting mired in a molasses of ideas and posturing. I guess if there's anything I want people to take away from this is that there are many ways of bringing about change and very few of those ways are instantaneous and complete. Enthusiasm is good as long as we temper it with a bit of realism.
5 comments:
I've always been of the mind that there should be no minimum wage. Some jobs out there, and some employees, are not a) worth $5.15 an hour or b) the employee is getting more out of the job than pay.
B is the case with teen workers. You get far more out of your first job than a pay check. It is most likely your first taste of the real world and what you learn there carries through the rest of your working life. Dealing with co-workers, bosses and, eventually, subordinates. The pay check, in the end, is really just icing on the cake.
There is a local 'fast food' joint back home, they've got two restaurants on opposite sides of the Washington/Idaho boarder. The Washington side is over $9 per hour to start and drives cost up at that store. Idaho is somewhere around $5.50 and it allows them to pay the experienced workers and managers a little more for the extra work they do and the lack of need for someone to double check their work.
I've always looked at a rising minimum wage to be a contributing factor to the increased cost of living. It makes it more expensive to get unskilled labor done and in turn raises the end user price.
As companies have shown in the past, if things get cheaper to operate they won't lower prices and just take more profit, so dropping the minimum at this point is out of the question, but halting its increase may keep the final price down.
I'd like to see it abolished entirely and people should have to negotiate for their pay at all levels. But I don't think we're ready for that as a society. Too many people really do need someone looking out for them because they haven't been taught to look after themselves.
I'm going to have to disagree on this one. In an economy where there is a labor shortage your idea would work great. The demands of the employees would dictate the amount employers pay and they'd have to pay a little extra if they wanted an experienced employee or if the job required more skill. In this economy however, that just wouldn't work. Employers can pay pennies for jobs...even ones that require skill and experience...because having a low paying job is better than no job at all. Our generation (and I refer to Generation X here) is already earning less (compared to the cost of living) than previous generations despite being better educated.
I guess the main reason I believe there needs to be a minimum wage (and this minimum amount should cover inexperienced lower rung jobs so it will undoubtedly be low) is that employers will try to get around paying employees what they're worth. No American should have a full time job and still be at the poverty level. It's those Americans who prefer not to work that have problems looking after themselves. And, in the current economy, labor costs aren't the biggest factor in driving up costs to consumers. With fewer consumers purchasing goods in order to cut household budgets, companies and corporations lose profits and increase prices in order to compensate. By contrast, the cost of labor for these companies is not increased and their employees are earning the same they were several years ago even though the cost of goods has increased. This does not a good situation make.
I don't have anything to say, but I can't just click a "like" button.
Dam it. Once again, my name is Matt not UNKNOWN.
So, maybe fairness should be thrown out the window and the rules should be different for huge corporations than they are for small businesses. The big guys always seem to hide behind the scrappy American entrepreneur with comments like "He's in the one percent, too!" and that sort of garbage.
The minimum wage rules appear to be something to keep the big guys in check, anyway. When you have a business that employs hundreds of people there is no way to know each and every person, what they are worth and how they are doing when you're sitting at the top. Whereas with a small business, chances are you know all of your employees fairly well, understand their situations and actually see them as people and not numbers. Hell, I'm friends with my first boss on facebook, 15 years later and I was what amounted to a soda jerk at his establishment. What I learned there (how to cut corners, make simple tasks appear more difficult to score sympathy and how to manipulate co-workers) was extremely valuable and well worth doing the work for $5.15 and hour (the minimum wage at the time). I didn't have any serious bills; put gas in the car, some fast food every now and then and a crippling video game habit, so I didn't need any more than that.
I understand that people working full-time adult jobs should be properly paid for their work, but certain jobs really don't add up to being worth all that much.
Of course, if the guys at the top realized that hoarding money for the sake of having more money is ridiculous, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Who needs billions of dollars? Really needs it? It would be hard to even conceptualize that much cash. You could start hundreds of financially self-sustaining factories and businesses, create thousands of jobs. Or you could blow it on expensive cars and things. Or, worst of all, stash it in a bank account and keep it out of the economy where it'll do some good.
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