Why an increase in minimum wage is as unproductive an appraoch to wage equality as we can imagine
Anonymous December 14, 2015 at 11:30 AM
Canada's middle class has just surpassed the US in after tax income. Why, how? By doing everything the GOP is against: higher min wage, more unions, higher taxes on the rich, free health care and strong bank regulation. That's how.
Trickle down... what a crock.
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Editor's notes: a reply to the above reader comment:
John Smithson December 14, 2015 at 12:36 PM
Funny, but you have to go to Canada for "proof" that Obama's scheme's actually work, because the same agenda is not working here, in the US.
I am not going to take time to study Canadian domestic policy as to wages and financial. It's GDP (2013) was around 1.5 trillion dollars compared to the US at 16.5 trillion. And, in that difference there is a world of reasonable contrasts.
Understand that a rising minimum wage, in the United States, has eliminated nearly 10 million minimum jobs for the entry level and low level wage earner. `1974, the wage was $2.75 per hour and 15.6 million folks earned that wage. Today, at 7.25 dollars per hour, we have 6 million folks on minimum wage. Double that wage to $15 per hour, and you may less than 1 million folks working at that level of pay. In view of this irrefutable fact, how has a rise in minimum wage ever helped the working poor, as a segment of the population?
As an aside: Welfare benefits must never be confused with personal wealth statistics. One can actually amass more than $30,000 in welfare benefits (ObamaCare subsidies, rent assistance, child tax credits, and food stamps) and still be poor. If personal wealth does not lead to increased personal freedoms, it is not personal and it is certainly not "freedom. Being enslaved to a welfare systems that entraps the constituent and enlists is his political support for ever, is hardly "freedom" in anyone's book.
Because our workforce is educationally unqualified to earn a higher wage, the jobless working poor have had no choice but to enroll in various welfare programs. They sure as the world are not "going union." Our banking regulations have only increased the size of banking institutions while more than 300 local and smaller community banks have gone out of business during these Obama years . . . . . so how is the working poor benefited in these statistics ? Answer: they are not. And free health care? Hey, the working poor was already getting free health care., and, still, today, 5 years after the law was signed, there remains 40 million Americans uninsured. Our ER centers remain as busy as before ObamaCare. The program has solved absolutely nothing.
The overriding problem is "continuing education." The immigrant class has a very high percentage of folks without the kind of education that equips them for higher paying jobs.
Referring to the minimum wage as a wage designed to support a family confuses the issue. Families need a living wage, not a minimum wage. With that said, working at McDonald's or the local gas station isn't a career. These are jobs designed to help entry-level workers join the workforce, not to support the financial needs of a family.
On the core issue of minimum wage itself, political wrangling is unlikely to result in a real solution. A more practical solution is to join the workforce at the low end of the wage scale, build your skills, get an education and move up the ladder to a better paying job just as members of the workforce have done for generations.
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Some points taken from Investmentpedia, here.
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(Karen) In this day and age, most people are looking for that magic button--the one that will make everything peachy with little to no effort from the individual. And it's not just the younger generations either. This is why the diet programs and the beauty industry are such money makers! And gym memberships? Wear this brand of clothes and all your problems will go away and you will be super popular. Is it any wonder that our politics and health insurance programs are following the same lines? And the worst part? The number of people that keep voting for this crap guarantees that we will keep moving down this road.
ReplyDeleteIf the welfare recipients were GOP voters, your comments would be very different. What we have here is nothing but a partisan discussion that helps no one and leaves the poor, very poor.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the policies that enrich the 1%. I'm all right Jack, keep your hands off of my stack.
ReplyDeleteThank you GOP.
Forbes has this to say: We can’t make a final call on whether or not Reid was right in saying the Democratic Party "doesn't have many billionaires." We know that both parties have billionaire backers. In 2012, the advantage went to the Republicans. So far in 2014, the Democrats have the edge in terms of public donations to outside spending groups. But this is far from a full picture because of current donation disclosure rules. Plenty of money to go around.
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