Judge
The ones around here like that are on the dole.Nice rant, but as a matter of practical reality, not too many people who have multiple cell phones and smart TVs and several vehicles have to worry about working for minimum wage
Very few places, by the way, are able to get by paying minimum wage.
Lots of signs for help wanted paying a lot more than minimum wage at fast food and retail.
Can't fill jobs because handouts are too good.
These people would lose out by taking a job
Plato once said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools, because they have to say something.”
"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." "Men willingly believe what they wish to believe."
Julius Caesar
There's no natural calamity that government can't make worse.
Bill Bonner
Banned
I hear this frequently. Does anybody know exactly how it works that somebody manages to have a nice income from the government without working? (Unless maybe you're retired military or on Social Security, which isn't what we're talking about here.)Originally Posted by Davy Crockett
For instance, let's say you're a single adult of working age, not part of a household with kids, and able-bodied and not suffering from some kind of mental disability (other maybe than laziness). How much can you expect to get on a monthly basis from federal, state, and local governments? And what are the programs that hand out the cash?
Congressman
Yes The Government is a big problem in this wage war. Stop paying people too Stay Home. Quit Paying people for doing nothing and those jobs that are not getting filled will some be. And lots of freebies in this country. people are getting food stamps that do NOT Need them but the government sets the standards so they can, And once you are on FS then you can get ALL sorts of free stuff like free cell phones, Even Half Off On Amazon Prime Membership.
And so many programs that will come in and see if your furnace is not up to standards. And Bingo You get a NEW Furnace. Windows bad? Same thing Free windows put in. Bad roof get on the programs. The liberals have sent up the programs so people Get Dependent on them. THAT is the way to Get Votes for the liberal D's You BUY their votes by giving these folks freebies.
JFK must be turing in his grave at what this country and the Dem's have down to it.~!
. NOW it is just the Opposite~!!!! And what happened to JFK, Oh yes thats right, he was Murdered~!Ask Not What Your Country Can do For You , Ask What YOU can do For Your Country
Judge
That's the complaint I hear from a lot of local business owners. I've never been an employer so I don't really know for myself ... but there's articles from the Cato Institute where they did the math:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/s...mum-wage.html/
Just as one example from the link ---
Total welfare benefits package: $29,817Pre-tax wage equivalent: $28,670
Hourly wage equivalent: $13.78
State hourly minimum wage for 2017: $7.25
The guy on welfare is earning the equivalent of $13.78 per hour for nothing when the worker is earning $7.25 per hour.
It's why in a lot of the rural areas where there's few higher-pay jobs, you find the majority of the populace on welfare.
And can you really blame them? I mean, economically, it's the smartest decision. You're almost a FOOL if you throw away the extra money by going and getting a job flipping burgers.
Especially when you can collect your welfare check and then go work an off-the-books job on top of it. There are LOTS of off-the-books jobs everywhere.
Judge
My wife works for a social service agency so I hear a lot of true stories/facts.
A few months back, I saw (can't remember where) that a family of 4 that's receiving all their benefits is equivalent to a family of 4 earning $60K/year
Around here, they sell their food stamps for cash and then go to the food agencies and cry about their hungry children.
Professionally manicured nails, newest iphones.
On food stamp day, the grocery carts are filled with t bone steaks and way more expensive things than I can buy.
Almost nothing they would have to actually cook.
Plato once said, “Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools, because they have to say something.”
"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." "Men willingly believe what they wish to believe."
Julius Caesar
There's no natural calamity that government can't make worse.
Bill Bonner
Banned
'Scuse me here, we're not talking about "the guy on welfare" as the local young able-bodied layabout with no dependents who just wants to surf all day. According to the article itself, "The study examined the package for a single mother with two children." It then goes on to list the various programs from which she would receive benefits: "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps); Medicaid; housing assistance; utility assistance; and Women, Infants, and Children."
Well, hell yeah! A single mother with two children is going to get a pretty fair amount of aid from those various programs. That's not news. And for somebody in that situation, $30K is not a lordly amount of money, either. And I'm not sure what people would prefer to do instead. Any ideas?
Again, we should limit the discussion to the single mother wtih two kids. What exactly do people want to do with these women rather than give them money? Realistically, they mostly don't have any useful skills, otherwise they would be able to make significantly more than minimum wage. Plus it's going to be harder for them to do well at or maintain a job because of the constant demands of single parenthood. And at the other end, their parenting is going to suffer because they won't be around for 8-10 hours a day, and are going to be a lot more burned out when they get home after a hard day flipping burgers. So maybe the objection is that they're probably lousy parents anyway, but even if so, being mostly absent will simply make them worse parents. Note also that if they're working, their expenses will rise significantly because they'll have to get childcare. Or are you assuming that the grandparents will look after the children all the time? Or should the kids just make do on their own? Or do you want the government to replace some of those other welfare benefits with a childcare allowance?
Your observations about the rural areas are right, but it's also not surprising. Look, if you've got ambition and education, and if you're not restricted from moving somewhere because of familiy obligations or other considerations, you're going to go elsewhere--typically an urban or suburban area--because that's where the opportunity is. In addition, poor people tend to depend a lot more heavily on family and friend networks, and that means that it's harder for people without skills and resources to leave and go to a place where they don't have that same support. They're effectively trapped. So there's a bit of a self-selection process going on.
As for those "off-the-books" jobs, that's an interesting one because it implies that whoever the people are actually have skills for which others are willing to pay. Does that really apply to a lot of these people on welfare, for instance our hypothetical welfare recipient who's a single mother with two kids? I dunno. If you're talking about a stereotypical badly-educated not-very-well-brought-up young woman who has spent her mid- to late teens into her now mid-20s taking care of small kids mostly on her own, what kind of skills does she have to offer on the informal job market?
As an aside, because of where you live, the "off-the-books" option may seem more common and viable to you than is actually the case in a lot of other places. We visited some friends in HOVE last year, and I was amazed at how just about everybody up there had a side hustle going from which they derived part or all of their income. But even in those cases, the people were often bohemian dropout types who had lived and worked in the straight world for a long time and had useful skills that others were willing to pay for.
Judge
The real minimum wage is $0 (zero, nothing, nada) per hour
July 16, 2019
The real minimum wage is $0 (zero, nothing, nada) per hour
By Ethel C. Fenig
High minimum wages just help force a West Coast restaurant chain into bankruptcy, and it has already closed multiple locations. Which means that a growing number of the chain's workers will not be earning the legally mandated minimum wage of $15 an hour -- and many earned more -- but the economically realistic $0 per hour. In other words, nothing. Or for the multicultural and diverse politically correct crowd...nada. That's Spanish for...nothing. And many only Spanish immigrant (both legal and illegal) speakers work in the food service/ restaurant industry.
And that's only a small example of the real-life effects of increasing the minimum wage: those most financially vulnerable, such as the unskilled, the least experienced, Afro-Americans and other "people of color" (sic), the young, the minimally educated will suffer the most. Now, thanks to the do-gooders, i.e., lefty legislators, highly paid union officials and other self-anointed moral regressives (often erroneously called progressive but there's is nothing progressive about them), who will not suffer from their public virtue signaling, thousands of people will be unemployed.
Apparently the highly paid legislators and union hacks have not read the non partisan Congressional Budget Office report, "The Effects on Employment and Family Income of Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage," which would have predicted this outcome. Or maybe they did, did not like the facts which opposed their utopian -- and vote getting – narrative, and so ignored it. Or maybe they thought they could legislate economic law just as they have successfully legislated on, oh say, climate. And weather. Or something.
Anyway, the CBO report states that with a mandated minimum wage increase there is good news for many but for those financially insecure, the low wage earners that this law was supposed to help, there is very bad news.
Increasing the federal minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. For most low-wage workers, earnings and family income would increase, which would lift some families out of poverty. But other low-wage workers would become jobless, and their family income would fall—in some cases, below the poverty threshold. (snip)Oh well, 1.3 million workers earning $0 per hour aren't really that many are they? And neither are 3.7 million workers who would suddenly be thrown back into the nether world of labor non-participation. Or something. And it is certainly easier to deal with the sure to increase automation as in say, self-checkout lanes and other self-service options than cashiers, further reducing opportunities, isn't it?
Effects of the $15 Option on Employment and Income. According to CBO’s median estimate, under the $15 option, 1.3 million workers who would otherwise be employed would be jobless in an average week in 2025. (That would equal a 0.8 percent reduction in the number of employed workers.) CBO estimates that there is about a two-thirds chance that the change in employment would lie between about zero and a reduction of 3.7 million workers (see Table 1).
Welcome to McDonald's... without an employeePhoto credit: Tdorante 10Well, isn't it? And, as the saying has it, you have to break eggs to make an omelet.
But wait...there is more good news/bad news from the CBO about increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
• Boost workers’ earnings through higher wages, though some of those higher earnings would be offset by higher rates of joblessness;Huh? What did that last sentence say -- increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour would eventually reduce real income? Oh. But… but... but... isn't that uhm, against the law? Apparently not against the laws of economics and reality -- the law of unintended consequences.
• Reduce business income and raise prices as higher labor costs were absorbed by business owners and then passed on to consumers; and
• Reduce the nation’s output slightly through the reduction in employment and a corresponding decline in the nation’s stock of capital (such as buildings, machines, and technologies).
On the basis of those effects and CBO’s estimate of the median effect on employment, the $15 option would reduce total real (inflation-adjusted) family income in 2025 by $9 billion, or 0.1 percent.1 1.
And the more legislators interfere with these latter laws the worse off we all are. Zero dollars per hour in any language is still nothing. So why don't legislators do what they do best: kiss babies to win elections and just stop legislating. President Donald J. Trump (R) did something similar -- eliminate burdensome laws once he was elected and boom! according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent report:
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 224,000 in June, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 3.7 percent. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.And all those workers are making much more than $ nothing per hour.
”The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher
Land Owner
My son averages $50 per hour for a 5 hour shift at a high end restaurant on the beach, here. He also makes that much in his painting business undercutting the Mexicans here whom have gotten very greedy. It did not come easy. He has a good personality and is really efficient in both jobs. Never a victim, he is always improving his game.
Land Owner
Attitude is everything. My first wife and her whole family were always blaming rich people for their problems. Lifelong Democrats, they thought that some entity like government should take from others to give them a bigger slice of the pie. Nothing was ever "fair" in their world. Negativity ruled their lives.
Judge
One thing no one has mentioned (no one here has actually been an employer, even on a very small scale?) is that the wage paid to the employee is only about half of the actual cost of employing said employee... and those "non wage expenses" ALSO rise when the hourly wage rises. Unemployment "insurance", disability, Social Security and Medicare and workman's compensation are based on wages paid.
There is a reason so many "under the table" jobs exist... the job and skills required may justify $15 an hour, but no way can it justify $25 plus 10 hours per month of government paperwork.
But those saying there are many people who lack the skills for even basic employment are right... the problem is, that group is growing, because ut is highly subsidized by the government. And that practice is NOT sustainable.
I also disagree that "working at McDonalds" doesn't help prepare you for working elsewhere...
All four of our kids found that "working on the family dairy farm" literally moved their resume to the top of the heap, in such diverse fields as education, mechanical engineering and programming machinist. Interestingly, no one seemed to care exactly *what* their jobs on the farm were... just the fact that they had the experience was believed to make them responsible, hard workers.
Only one of our kids worked at McDonalds, and their main take-away from the job was they'd rather pitch out chicken pens than work fast food. But they were promoted to night manager within 3 months. And they were stunned to find out that the majority of their co-workers only showed up when they felt like it!
Honestly, if something doesn't change, robots *will be* necessary, because very few kids are being raised with any sort of sense of responsibility or work ethic. One of our sons, who always ends up being (very reluctantly) promoted to management in any job he has, says the difference between most foreign workers and younger Americans is NOT ability... The foreign coders often lack skills the Americans have (mostly in the innovation and problem solving areas), but they *show up to workj and actually work the entire day. He's had new (American) hires spend several hours a day *in their first week!* playing Solitaire and surfing Zillow in the computer, rather than working on their assigned projects. When called on it, they don't see the problem!
Summerthyme
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote