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San Francisco Becomes First US City With $10 Minimum Wage

bordelais7 said:
The way you phrased that question makes it seem as if the two options are mutually exclusive.
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Good point. I should edit it to include an "all of the above" option.
 
bordelais7 said:
Also, I'm setting the over/under for the "hey, $19/hr minimum works in Denmark!" argument to be thrown out within the next 6 posts, "Socialism" in the next 4, and "wake up America CEO profits etcetera!" in the next 1 or 2. By page 4 of this thread we'll get down to the real underlying issues of abortion, Mormonism, and the inevitable extinction of laptops. I'm betting $10,000.
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I think I will take the over on that. I accept paypal.
 
Essentially, minimum wage won't hurt big business that much, but what it does hurt is small businesses. Small businesses is essentially comprised of "middle-class" the people that we are trying to bring more power/wealth too. This will increase unemployment and cause some small businesses to go out.
 
$10/hr in San Francisco is hardly enough to pay rent. If you're not willing to give your employees a livable wage, then what's the point of you?
 
siromar said:
$10/hr in San Francisco is hardly enough to pay rent. If you're not willing to give your employees a livable wage, then what's the point of you?
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Good point. Instead of owning a business with 5 minimum wage employees, it would be more ethically and morally correct to shut it down and have 6 people making $0/hr. Then the business owner could sleep at night instead of existing solely to act as an oppressive tyrant.

Inferring that it should be incumbent upon the business owner to artificially inflate wages seems ridiculous. I'm all for business owners being benevolent and recognizing the human element where it is financially prudent to do so, but really -- where does it end?

Who forces those minimum wage employees to take those jobs, anyway? Why not simply go out and start your own business and immediately become rich, duh?

Small business is a tough enough arena as it is that I don't see how heaping on even more disincentives will help local economies.
 
LogGrad98 said:
I know if my dad suddenly had to pay any of his 7 employees more money (I think he has 3 or 4 at minimum wage now) he would have to cut at least one person to be able to pay the rest. That is not an insubstantial amount, from the $7 range to the $10 range. ... As One Brow said, I have no idea if the SF area can handle that level of an increase, but I sure hope the small-business owners are able to adjust without needing to let go too many people.
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If the typical minimum wage earaner is making $7 and gets raised to $10, I agree that jump may be too high. From what I have seen, this type of jump usually happens when much of the normally affect market (fast-food workers, etc.) are already being hired near the $10 level. I don't pretend to have statistics on that, though.
 
bordelais7 said:
Good point. Instead of owning a business with 5 minimum wage employees, it would be more ethically and morally correct to shut it down and have 6 people making $0/hr. Then the business owner could sleep at night instead of existing solely to act as an oppressive tyrant.

Inferring that it should be incumbent upon the business owner to artificially inflate wages seems ridiculous. I'm all for business owners being benevolent and recognizing the human element where it is financially prudent to do so, but really -- where does it end?

Who forces those minimum wage employees to take those jobs, anyway? Why not simply go out and start your own business and immediately become rich, duh?

Small business is a tough enough arena as it is that I don't see how heaping on even more disincentives will help local economies.
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If we're playing the game of hyperbole, then why not legalize slave labor? After all, the only thing that matters is you making money!

You act like $10 is scandalous. It's perfectly reasonable for society to expect you to pay your workers a wage they can survive on. If your business can only provide a living for the owner, then there is no reason for anyone to care whether your business fails or succeeds.
 
bordelais7 said:
Good point. Instead of owning a business with 5 minimum wage employees, it would be more ethically and morally correct to shut it down and have 6 people making $0/hr. Then the business owner could sleep at night instead of existing solely to act as an oppressive tyrant.
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The need the business owner was filling will still exist. Some other business person will come along to find a more efficient means of production, and be able to meet the wage standard.

Of course, I believe in the power of business creativity, entreprenuership, and capitalistic motives, unlike so many people in this thread who are declaring this raise potentially disastrous.
 
siromar said:
If we're playing the game of hyperbole, then why not legalize slave labor? After all, the only thing that matters is you making money!

You act like $10 is scandalous. It's perfectly reasonable for society to expect you to pay your workers a wage they can survive on. If your business can only provide a living for the owner, then there is no reason for anyone to care whether your business fails or succeeds.
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No one has to care if a business fails or succeeds. All interactions should be voluntary, like starting the business, hiring workers, accepting employment, agreeing to a wage, purchasing the business's products or services... That's all. Let free people make free decisions about what they do and don't do. Slave labor? See that violates the voluntary part.

Do poor people need special protections? If they do is it because they are inferior to real humans? I happen to think poor people are equal to the rest of the human population and can handle themselves without special protections that take away their freedom to accept whatever wage they are willing to work for.

There are some jobs that are not worth $10/hr. Not all jobs need to provide a livable wage. I started working at 14 years old. My skill-set and responsibilities did not justify a livable wage. I didn't need a livable wage. No one did the job I did besides kids and retired people. If the employer was forced to pay $10/hr the job I did simply wouldn't exist. I wasn't making my employer that much money through my service.

Oh my god, I just realized I was a child-labor victim. I feel so sorry for myself.
 
Gameface said:
No one has to care if a business fails or succeeds. All interactions should be voluntary, like starting the business, hiring workers, accepting employment, agreeing to a wage, purchasing the business's products or services... That's all. Let free people make free decisions about what they do and don't do. Slave labor? See that violates the voluntary part.

Do poor people need special protections? If they do is it because they are inferior to real humans? I happen to think poor people are equal to the rest of the human population and can handle themselves without special protections that take away their freedom to accept whatever wage they are willing to work for.

There are some jobs that are not worth $10/hr. Not all jobs need to provide a livable wage. I started working at 14 years old. My skill-set and responsibilities did not justify a livable wage. I didn't need a livable wage. No one did the job I did besides kids and retired people. If the employer was forced to pay $10/hr the job I did simply wouldn't exist. I wasn't making my employer that much money through my service.

Oh my god, I just realized I was a child-labor victim. I feel so sorry for myself.
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I don't think that's the best approach to the issue. Freedom is a double edged sword. You may have enjoyed working when you were 14, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm also certain that the much younger children who "voluntarily" worked for 16 hours a day during the industrial revolution disagree. Every subject must be approached rationally with specific objectives in mind. These all-encompassing ideals like free-market capitalism or socialism are not helpful at all.

If an equilibrium can be reached where businesses can succeed and make a profit, while ensuring that as many people as possible can live decently, then that's what we should aim for. Not a vague complaint about freedom. After all, when does your freedom end? Are you free to collude with other businesses to keep wages artificially low? That's certainly been done. How about freedom to fix prices? What exactly is the point of freedom? Perhaps we should focus on more material objective instead of self-serving doubletalk.
 
One Brow said:
The need the business owner was filling will still exist. Some other business person will come along to find a more efficient means of production, and be able to meet the wage standard.

Of course, I believe in the power of business creativity, entreprenuership, and capitalistic motives, unlike so many people in this thread who are declaring this raise potentially disastrous.
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So part and parcel with that is federally and locally mandated laws governing what those entrepeneurs are allowed to pay? If you really believed in that, it would make more sense to be against a minimum wage at all.
 
One Brow said:
The need the business owner was filling will still exist. Some other business person will come along to find a more efficient means of production, and be able to meet the wage standard.
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First of all, who says that the need will still exist? You believe that production and creativity are only driven by demand, and that demand can't be created?

Secondly, I also believe in ingenuity and that businesses will look for efficiency. That was my point, I think. A business with 4 people is more efficient from a cost perspective than a business with 5 people. Which leaves one person out in the cold. Benefits across the board have also dropped systematically as a product of wage demands.
 
siromar said:
I don't think that's the best approach to the issue. Freedom is a double edged sword. You may have enjoyed working when you were 14, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm also certain that the much younger children who "voluntarily" worked for 16 hours a day during the industrial revolution disagree. Every subject must be approached rationally with specific objectives in mind. These all-encompassing ideals like free-market capitalism or socialism are not helpful at all.

If an equilibrium can be reached where businesses can succeed and make a profit, while ensuring that as many people as possible can live decently, then that's what we should aim for. Not a vague complaint about freedom. After all, when does your freedom end? Are you free to collude with other businesses to keep wages artificially low? That's certainly been done. How about freedom to fix prices? What exactly is the point of freedom? Perhaps we should focus on more material objective instead of self-serving doubletalk.
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Ok, then...let's focus on more material facts. Why do most economists agree that a minimum wage increase affects employment negatively and does nothing to relieve burden on the earner?

Also, a couple more questions for thought. What percentage of workers currently earn minimum wage? What percentage of them are primary wage-earners? How long does a worker remain at minimum wage on average?
 
Not a big deal for the bay area. A dishwasher (the person not the appliance) would probably be taking a pay cut to work for $10/hour. Your arguments could apply for other areas of the country, but I doubt there were many jobs paying less than $10/hour anyway.
 
bordelais7 said:
Ok, then...let's focus on more material facts. Why do most economists agree that a minimum wage increase affects employment negatively and does nothing to relieve burden on the earner?

Also, a couple more questions for thought. What percentage of workers currently earn minimum wage? What percentage of them are primary wage-earners? How long does a worker remain at minimum wage on average?
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That's a COMPLETELY different argument. If evidence suggests that minimum wage laws cause more harm than help, then we should reconsider the options. I'm not saying that they do (I'd have to study the evidence). But I have no religious attachment to minimum wage or any other solution. My only criteria is objective and measurable improvement for as many people as possible.
 
This is interesting...

https://thecollegeconservative.com/2011/12/13/my-time-at-walmart-why-we-need-serious-welfare-reform/

During the 2010 and 2011 summers, I was a cashier at Wal-Mart #1788 in Scarborough, Maine. I spent hours upon hours toiling away at a register, scanning, bagging, and dealing with questionable clientele. These were all expected parts of the job, and I was okay with it. What I didn’t expect to be part of my job at Wal-Mart was to witness massive amounts of welfare fraud and abuse.
I understand that sometimes, people are destitute. They need help, and they accept help from the state in order to feed their families. This is fine. It happens. I’m not against temporary aid helping those who truly need it. What I saw at Wal-Mart, however, was not temporary aid. I witnessed generations of families all relying on the state to buy food and other items. I literally witnessed mothers of small children asking their mothers if they could borrow their EBT cards. I once had a man show me his welfare card for an ID to buy alcohol. The man was from Massachusetts. Governor Michael Dukakis’ signature was on his welfare card. Dukakis’ last gubernatorial term ended in January of 1991. I was born in June of 1991. The man had been on welfare my entire life. That’s not how welfare was intended, but sadly, it is what it has become.

Other things witnessed while working as a cashier included:
a) People ignoring me on their iPhones while the state paid for their food. (For those of you keeping score at home, an iPhone is at least $200, and requires a data package of at least $25 a month. If a person can spend $25+ a month so they can watch YouTube 24/7, I don’t see why they can’t spend that money on food.)

b) People using TANF (EBT Cash) money to buy such necessities such as earrings, kitkat bars, beer, WWE figurines, and, my personal favorite, a slip n’ slide. TANF money does not have restrictions like food stamps on what can be bought with it.

c) Extravagant purchases made with food stamps; including, but not limited to: steaks, lobsters, and giant birthday cakes.

d) A man who ran a hotdog stand on the pier in Portland, Maine used to come through my line. He would always discuss his hotdog stand and encourage me to “come visit him for lunch some day.” What would he buy? Hotdogs, buns, mustard, ketchup, etc. How would he pay for it? Food stamps. Either that man really likes hotdogs, or the state is paying for his business. Not okay.
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I love the idea that kids in the industrial revolution were victims. By working, since few of them went to school anyway and worked at home in one way or another before the evil factory opened up, they no longer went hungry. See, at the dawn of the industrial revolution people actually went without food a lot of the time. They didn't have running water, didn't have adequate clothing, didn't have medical care, entire families lived in one room shacks. Working was the least of their problems. And even without minimum wage laws wages started going up. Did the factory owners start making a lot of money long before the workers started making more? Yeah. Would we be better off today had there been no industrial revolution? Hell no! Are poor people better off post industrial revolution? Well according to some, since poor people can only afford 40-50" flat screens, and can only get 3g smart phones, they're worse off than ever because the difference between how cushy modern life is for them is so much different than how cushy modern life is for a CEO. So forget all the real progress that has been made, this is a comparison between the richest and the poorest. We should do like the Soviet Union did and make everyone live in poverty so that we can all be equal, because the true measure of a great society is how close the standard of living is from top to bottom, even if everyone is starving.
 
siromar said:
If an equilibrium can be reached where businesses can succeed and make a profit, while ensuring that as many people as possible can live decently, then that's what we should aim for. Not a vague complaint about freedom.
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The problem is "we" didn't start the business. "We" don't have a say in what the business should do or not do. "We" can decide to work there or not at the wage we can agree to with the owner. "We" can chose to buy the products or services that business offers or not.

No, colluding to suppress wages is a form of coercion. Besides that, in case you don't know, business compete against one another. Offering a better wage is a great way to get the employees you need. In the long run collusion between competing business will not last. In the short run those types of manipulations are not allowed.

You asked where the freedom ends? This is not a new problem. Individual rights allows each individual to pursue their own interests and desires so long as they do not deny that privilege from others. It's astonishingly beautiful in it's utter simplicity.
 
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