Should we raise the minimum wage?

Raising wage is not the answer to improving living conditions of people who work for minimum wage.

You could raise minimum wage to $100 an hour and in due time the same quality of life would return to that of $5.15 an hour.

Every time somebody mentions minimum wage they think of a big corporation making people work for pocket change. In reality the big corporations are paying more than minimum wage. Most major retail and fast food operations are going to start you out at least $6.50 with a guaranteed raise to $7 after you prove yourself.

Small businesses are the only places that still pay minimum wage. If you raise that wage that may mean somebody loses a job, or even worse when someone leaves they are never replaced. This leaves the remaining workers do more with less help. In some cases, the small business may be forced to shut down.

I have a better idea. How about instead of raising the minimum wage, we make education more affordable. Minimum wage workers should get a discount on their education or let them payback loans in affordable installments.

Minimum wage jobs are not intended to be career jobs. Minimum wage jobs are there for you to gain experience and to prove you handle the responsibilities of any given job. The longest amount of time you should work a minimum wage job is six months to a year.

As soon as you hit the six-month mark, you should start seeking other jobs. I did exactly that when I was in high school. I washed dishes in a greasy rib joint for about 8 months. I got tired of working for a overbearing (Insert Expletive Here). We had a verbal confrontation and he fired me. I spent the entire next day dropping applications at every place that was hiring.

Pratt’s called me three days later and offered me a dollar more an hour to start working as a cashier. The rest is history.

I do not care who you are, nobody is stuck working for chump change. You should always strive to find a better job and keeping searching until you find something that fits you.

You do not need to make a million to be happy, you need just enough to live a little.

I think it's kind of a joke that we even have a minimum wage. People aren't going to work for 5.15 anyways, and if they do, they're not too smart.

I thnk it's stupid this president hasn't raised minimum wage. $5.15 an hour? You can't live off that. With inflation over the past 6 years, I don't understand why minimum wage hasn't been raised.

I do not think you understand how our economy works. Every time minimum wage goes up so does the cost of living for everyone. If you raise minimum wage by $1 everyone in the work force from top to bottom gets a raise.

Companies are not going to absorb a mandated increase. Instead, they will pass it on to the customer, cut employee work hours and benefits or cut positions through either layoffs or attrition.

An increase in minimum wage does nothing more than make politicians look good. The minimum wage employee will see a temporary relief for maybe six months to a year. When inflation finally catches up to the new wage the employee is right back at square one.

What we need to do is make education and job training more accessible to those who are on minimum wage. The key is to get people out of those jobs and into jobs that pay well and provide benefits.

In this country, we have a stupid mindset that only the rich can go to school. You can go to school regardless of who you are. Sometimes being who you are can help you find methods of financing school.

OklaCity_75 is right. I remember when the minimum wage was raised to 5.15. The exact day it was raised, prices went up at all of the fast food restaurants.

Pay increase would be more than increase in prices. Patrick, when that happened, prices only went up a few cents. Pay went up almost $1. Most service jobs always pay more the minimum. At least $6 an hour. Raise minimum wage to $7.50.

If I take an $8.50 job, most likely it will be raised to $9 after 30, 120, or 6 months. There is even a good chance that I will be raised to a dollar within 12-18 months. Some companies even offer benefits for $9 hour jobs. How many new hires even last a year before moving onto something else or taking on an easier job?
How about in just 6 months?
What would be the point of a $7.5 min wage?
I wouldn't even expect to get paid &7.50 for some of the work I've done. I can't see why anyone else would.

I already see small businesses suffering. Iknow a minimum wage hike could potentially cause some serious harm to our business. Why make it harder for Oklahoma businesses? Corporations will just step in and take over even more than they already control.

I guess perhaps if the min wage is increased there will be more lottery and casino revenues. Since that will happen, why not give an actual cut to those selling the darn tickets.

The point? What about those people who can not get anything EXCEPT those minimim wage jobs. They deserve a living wage also. Plus, raise wages, lower welfare.

I do not care who you are nobody in the world is stuck in a minimum wage job.

Everyone I have known that uses that excuse is almost always lacking motivation to make themselves a more attractive candidate for employment.

These days if you want a good paying job you have to go school somewhere. Sometimes that means paying for school out of your own pocket and then finding a job.

The entire concept of a "minimum wage" is fundamentally flawed from a political and economic standpoint.

First, it implies that every job is worth a certain amount of money, and that's flatly wrong. Second, it goes back to a simple economic concept of a price floor; if you impose a price floor on a good or service above where the market would drive that price, you create a surplus. In the employment market, that's a labor surplus otherwise known as "unemployment."

Any business owner who has two jobs worth $4/hr, but is compelled to pay $5/hr, ends up hiring only *one* person. That deprives the economy of income to buy other goods and services, the government of payroll and income taxes, the business owner of productive employees, and ingrains inefficiency into his business that he cannot control. In a very broad sense (over a 30-year-plus period, that's one of the biggest things that happened to GM, but that's another story).

The other problem is that this entire concept of a "living wage" implies that it is a *company's* responsibility to make sure you *have* a "living" wage, which I simply do not abide. Companies are in the business of making money by making and selling diverse products and services, thereby creating real, value-added jobs that benefit the employee and the company in particular, and broader society in general. Forcing a minimum wage does precisely the opposite. Worse still is a notion that some arbitrary, nameless, dense, faceless government committee should define what a "living" wage is, considering that $10/hr in Oklahoma gets you a much better standard of living than that same $10 will in, say, New York City.

It is not my employer's job to give me a "living" wage. It is up to me to a) take what my employer gives me and live on it to the best of my ability , and b) increase to the extent possible my own ability to improve the wage my employer is willing to offer me.

-SoonerDave

^^^
well said.
minimum wage jobs are, whats the word, i guess i'll use stater jobs. get your feet wet in the job market so you can get a better paying job later on.

When I was in New Mexico last week I spoke with a couple of their reps when I visited the state capitol. Something they told me was interesting. Since the 60's, inflation has made prices about 10 times what they were in the 60's. Meanwhile, minimum wage has only risen to 5 times the level in the 60's. This is why in New Mexico minimum wage is about to go up to $10.50 for contract jobs, up from 9 something. Of course, cost of living is quite a bit more there as well.

Patrick

A general inflation rate of about 5% per year will net a 9.9% increase in prices over a 47-year span (1960 through 2006), so in real terms that kind of price jump isn't surprising.

The real problem is in the computation of the inflation rate; I don't remember the details, but Malcolm Berko (a fairly well-known financial writer/analyst) has for years debunked the general CPI and corresponding inflation rates as fallacies, and that core cost-of-living rates accelerate much more rapidly in the real world.

It's a shame, however, that New Mexico has chosen to push people out of the employment market by increasing their minimum wage in this fashion. Chaging the minimum wage makes for good populist politics, but rarely does it make sound economic policy.

-SoonerDave

I thought inflation was an avg 2% which is where the Fed aims for. This year it has been about 2.5%

I was looking at the "wage" poster that hangs in all of our breakrooms at work, and was noticing it states on there that minimum wage is $5.15 for all employees UNDER THE AGE OF 20. Maybe I was misreading it, but I interpreted that people over the age of 20 should be paid more than $5.15/hour?

Anyone know anything about this?

From what I have seen and read in news reports, it looks like a minimum wage increase could be a reality.

The bill goes to the senate this week. If you think about it, they have no choice but to pass it into law. This is an election year and saying no to a wage increase can seriously hurt a politician's image.

I guess we look forward to 6.95 value meals at all the fast food restaurants. The price to eat at a casual restaurant will raise to $15-$20 a person vs. the $10-$15 it is now.

A minimum wage increase means everybody in the workforce is getting a cost of living raise. Everyone will get a raise regardless if you make $5.15 or $25.15 an hour. Wait staff will probably jump from $2.25 and hour to $5.00 an hour.

In a way, this is good news for the grocery business. When inflation catches up with the wages more people will prepare meals at home instead of dining out.

I just wish they would address the real problem here and provide minimum wage workers a means of earning a descent education. Raising the wage every so often is not the answer to getting people out of poverty. A good education and a proper money management is the key to eliminating poverty.

given that inheritance tax cuts for large estates are lumped together with the wage increase, it's likely that the bill will not pass in the senate... i hope. -M

So. You think that people that work their fannies off to pass a legacy on to their kids should have to give over half to the feds. Interesting.

It is obvious you are not going to inherit much when the time comes. Trust me. I would much rather pay a small portion of tax, or nothing at all on the money my parents leave me. They worked too hard to make my retirement possible to give it to the welfare cheats. That is where most of it would go.

In a meritocracy, we'd succeed on our own abilities and hard work, not those of someone else. If we depend on our parents (into our old age) for retirement, etc. how are we able to claim to be any better than the welfare cheats?

It's a morally interesting position you're in there anderson

The money doesn't go directly to welfare recipients. It goes to the general fund.

This kind of money does not provide economic growth, it's savings -- money being held out of the economy, not doing anything for anyone except maybe providing an immeasurable sense of security for the owner. It hurts the economy. There is little justification economically speaking for something like this.

This hurts the War on Terror just as much as it hurts health and human services. At any rate, it's not sound economic policy to support tax cuts amid international and local crises and vastly increased expenditures. If we're going to cut a source of income, we need to correspondingly cut an expenditure. Otherwise, that 8.4 trillion dollar debt will just keep on growing.

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mranderson,
i really didn't make myself clear... i hope the measure fails in the senate because of the wage increase. as for the inheritance taxes: i don't need my folks' money, i do pretty good on my own merits and am investing for my own eventual retirement. however, i personally feel that inheritance taxes are a form of double dipping. it doesn't feel fair to pay income tax once and then your heirs pay again to get your money upon your death. however, i totally agree that it's not responsible to cut such taxes without cutting spending. i think, though, that increasing minimum wage would probably have a bigger overall negative effect on the economy than reducing the inheritance tax on a small percentage of the population. -M

There are people who either need the money left by others (not neccessariy parents) or would use it for something good to inhance their lives. No matter what, the federal government has no business taking the majority of that hard earned investment portfolio.

If we get two for one, I am highly in favor of it. The only bad thiongs are, one, the minumum wage is being incresed too slowly, and it needs to be 10.00 per hour, not 7.00.

In most cases, an inheritance is not just going to one or two people.

Why should the government profit off your death? Why shouldn't your family members get a little nest egg if you choose to leave them one?

Death taxes and Inheritances taxes are nothing more than wealth redistribution. If you think about it, the family is being double taxed. The deceased person most likely paid their income taxes, paid sales and excise taxes on the items they left behind.

Why is it wrong to be rich and successful in this country? Why should the rich fill guilty because they took advantage of the opportunities in life?
In almost every rich family, somebody along the family bloodline got tired of scraping by and did something about it.

Just because I have money, I should not be obligated to give up a percentage of my estate to the government. The inheritance tax does not affect the people who have multimillion-dollar estates. It affects the rest of us in middleclass America who are often faced with the deceased person’s debts.

Those of us who need the inheritance money to pay off the debts of the deceased relative. My grandmother is on the verge of having to sell her house because of my grandfather’s medical bills. If she did not have to pay so much in taxes after his death she would probably sitting comfortable right now.

Then again, it is always easy to chastise the rich because we think every rich person has millions and millions of dollars. We do not see them as everyday people who made wise choices and properly managed their money.

i'm sympathetic to the inheritance tax issue, but i think it's irresponsible to cut taxes without first cutting spending. i agree that the death tax seems unfair, but i don't think that individual need comes into play when determining whether or not policy is fiscally responsible for the nation. however, i strongly disagree with anybody who thinks that raising minimum wage would be good for the economy.

first, i'm pretty certain that an estate's debts are settled before inheritance is doled out. furthermore, unless you're talking about funeral expenses i'm not sure how you would be personally liable for the debts of a deceased relative. as for a grandmother being taxed for a grandfather's death, i just don't think that inheritance tax plays a role here. if the grandparents are legally married, then everything is community property between the two... inheritance tax wouldn't come into play.

That's a cop out argument. Heck.. why should the government ever be able to profit off of anything you do? Income tax? Excise tax? etc?? Ever? The fact is that tax in life is a certainty, and it will be paid in various forms. I don't buy the "double taxation" argument as being particularly persuasive. The fact is that any tax besides income tax is also double taxation -- all of it. In fact, the estate tax may very well be single taxation and not double taxation. In many cases, invested retirement money is exempted from taxation. If this is the case, there is no double taxation occuring.

No, they are not redistribution. That money goes into the general fund last I checked. It is used as much to buy bombs to drop in the middle east as it is for health and human services -- and as I said before, if the person is wealthy and smart, they've shielded most of their savings from taxation.

Nothing wrong with it -- you just can't take it with you. Your kids did nothing but be born to rich parents. The parents are idiots if they don't set up a trust to go around the estate tax. If people with money don't practice sound fiscal discipline, then I really don't feel sorry for them being taxed. At this point, it's almost a voluntary tax.

And while they're alive, they can help their children take care of those same opportunities. In a land where you are supposed to be defined on your own merits, and not those of your father or grandfather, I fail to see the moral objection you're trying to make.

The provision ONLY affects estates valued in excess of 2 million dollars. Middle class my ass.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/...108143,00.html

They could have avoided this with a little estate planning. Medicare probably paid a heck of a lot of your grandfather's expenses. If she wants to probate the estate, she absolutely can. She really should see an attorney. She shouldn't have this type of difficulty after his death.

Some made good decisions, others are rich because of daddy's money and are complete screwups.

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