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Sturgeon's House

Minimum wage in the US


Toxn

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Yeah, of course they are trying to avoid taxes. Avoiding taxes is profitable, corporations are meant for profit. Also you're right, not being in the US and being in a cheaper country is also profitable. That's called outsourcing, and everything that could be brought over already was. 

 

Outsourcing is, in my humble opinion, nothing less than selling your own country out, and those that do it should be given a year's notice to cease, and then the hangings begin.

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Don't get me wrong. I hate most multinational corporations myself. And for half a groat, I'd raise the red flag of revolution up myself and line all their left-wing corporate boardmembers and political lackeys up against the wall myself were it not for the fact that I don't have enough ammo for them and for the religious fundamentalist preppers who'd try to waddle into the power vacuum as well.

 

Well, yeah, you don't have enough ammo because you're using a lever-action and a revolver!

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Let's be brutally honest here. The Minimum Wage debate is less about keeping people working at Walmart or McDonald's for $15 and more about fuck all corporations, isn't it? That and giving any government union employee an automatic pay increase because their contracts are based off of being a certain percentage above the minimum wage. It's just that the Minimum Wage proponents can't be honest with their actual goals of fucking over corporations which makes me respect them less.

 

Don't get me wrong. I hate most multinational corporations myself. And for half a groat, I'd raise the red flag of revolution up myself and line all their left-wing corporate boardmembers and political lackeys up against the wall myself were it not for the fact that I don't have enough ammo for them and for the religious fundamentalist preppers who'd try to waddle into the power vacuum as well.

I don't hate corporations just for the sake of hating on them.  For the most part, they are made up of smart, hardworking people trying to do best for themselves.  What bothers me is that the corporation is designed only to produce profit for the shareholder at the expense of everything else.  Its in essence a money making machine in the same way a shark is a fish eating machine.  It has no other priorities.  And yet, its not a product of nature, it's a man made institution.  It's also an institution that has a corporate license that allows it to exist.  Most of these licenses state that the corporation exists for some sort of public good, although that language has long since lost any meaning.  I actually prefer family owned corporations where there is at least some chance that the business will be run with the long term health of the company and it's employees will be considered.  In a "publicly" owned company, its all about shareholder value and fuck everything else.  This principle of "shareholder primacy" was established by the Michigan supreme court way back in 1919 in the Ford Vs Dodge bros case.  It's one of the important pieces of law that most people don't know much about.  The corporation has become too powerful as an institution in American life I think, but it's hard to come up with a really viable alternative.   

 

Also, fuck government workers.  Well, not really.  I work in the private non-profit sector.  We typically do twice as much work as a city employee does, and for half the pay.  So I am a bit jealous of the city workers with their Union paychecks.  But on the flip side, my job is at least more interesting than theirs. 

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Raising the minimum wage is fine as a current solution, the costs of wage are a tiny portion of a companies expenditure and wouldn't necessitate a equivalent increase of the price in goods. The company can eat it and deal with the fact they won't be subsidized by government support for workers (which is basically how Walmart etal treat food stamps, housing and heat assistance), and in doing so actually lowers the necessary tax burden on middle and lower income brackets.

 

I think a longterm solution is the abolition of the minimum wage, the implementation of a maximum wage, being aggressive on going after tax havens, increasing taxes for outsourcing, public data on wages and salary for any given job, a UBI, universal housing, and universal healthcare.

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Let's be brutally honest here. The Minimum Wage debate is less about keeping people working at Walmart or McDonald's for $15 and more about fuck all corporations, isn't it? That and giving any government union employee an automatic pay increase because their contracts are based off of being a certain percentage above the minimum wage. It's just that the Minimum Wage proponents can't be honest with their actual goals of fucking over corporations which makes me respect them less.

 

Don't get me wrong. I hate most multinational corporations myself. And for half a groat, I'd raise the red flag of revolution up myself and line all their left-wing corporate boardmembers and political lackeys up against the wall myself were it not for the fact that I don't have enough ammo for them and for the religious fundamentalist preppers who'd try to waddle into the power vacuum as well.

It's about buying votes. Period.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorta playing Devil's Advocate here, Walt (see: Agnostic on this issue), what do you say about the concern that a minimum wage takes away an employer's ability to reward good work, because it forces him to pay more for poor work? E.g., I have a pool of 45/hr that I can pay my three employees. Jill works the hardest and gets the most done, while Balthazar is a bit of a stoner and is much less efficient. Finally, Tim is lazy and unproductive. With a 15/hr minimum wage, I have to pay each 15/hr, effectively removing any incentive for my employees to work hard.

Which is why pay raises and promotions exist

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Rather than incentivize people working at fast food jobs, of which there is a glut, I'd rather work out a public/private partnership to get entry level workers into resource extraction jobs (farm workers, cannery workers, light industrial). You know, the jobs that "no Americans want to do" which is bullshit because Americans would be plenty happy to do them if the pay was anywhere close to decent. Hell, I'd rather state/federal governments pay the farmers and the workers to pick apples rather than having Americans sit on the dole while illegal immigrants get exploited.

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My understanding is that in a lot of places in the states, you can work 30-35 hours at Minimum wage and still qualify for food stamps.  Isn't that basically subsidizing the wages so those corporations don't have to pay it? My general opinion is that if you are going to specify a minimum wage then people should be at least able to pay basic required expenses in the area that they live.

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A staggered minimum wage between dependent teenagers and independent adults looks slightly promising. It provides a better living wage while getting the next generation work experience. 

I kinda disagree with this.  If you are doing work that is worth paying someone to do it, then pay them for it.  Companies have been using unpaid interns and coop students to skirt minimum wage laws for a long time. 

 

The other big thing is contract work.  A lot of employers up here have contracted out a lot of jobs that really should be full time internal. They hire people on 1 year contracts and then keep on 'renewing the contract' for several years to avoid paying benefits.  Programming and database management jobs especially.  Scotiabank is a big partner with Tech Mahindra, which is an Indian IT company that specializes in importing 'project' workers for 1-2 years.

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I kinda disagree with this. If you are doing work that is worth paying someone to do it, then pay them for it. Companies have been using unpaid interns and coop students to skirt minimum wage laws for a long time.

The other big thing is contract work. A lot of employers up here have contracted out a lot of jobs that really should be full time internal. They hire people on 1 year contracts and then keep on 'renewing the contract' for several years to avoid paying benefits. Programming and database management jobs especially. Scotiabank is a big partner with Tech Mahindra, which is an Indian IT company that specializes in importing 'project' workers for 1-2 years.

Those are some shit names

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That's an interesting thought, that a higher minimum wage would get employers to weed out employees more thoroughly, so they'd be getting "their money's worth".

Up until they need to fill minority and female quotas yes

But most American jobs like that are usually law enformenct or other government postings above minimal wage

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Don, I think you're off the mark with conflating reflexive loathing of corporations and minimum wage advocacy. Sure I hate corporations, but that's as much an implementation thing as anything. Market economics are a pretty decent way of levelling out supply and demand in cases where buyers and sellers have similar power. Some times it's the right tool for the job, and that's great. Sometimes it isn't and when it isn't it's tantamount to letting the fox watch the henhouse. If they're placed in an environment where it's profitable to create a ton of tragedies of the commons, they'll do it, just look at China's environment. Because of that, just letting the corporations have free rein to chip away to the least money they can pay at the bottom end of the scale is preposterously immoral based on the suffering it would cause.

 

I really like the mincome idea because first off it's straight out honest. Second, it isn't a byzantine horror show that's going to grow a cancerous bureaucracy to enforce eleventeen thousand rules. Sure it's just handing people money, but from there it's all on the person to do what they can with it, and it's a hell of a lot better than the security theater we put people through now. At the bottom of the class structure labor negotiations are totally messed up, the employer has a huge pool to draw from, while if the worker can't get a job, they're in trouble and hoping welfare can cover the gap. It's a really distorted market, and people having some security to actually try and make more of themselves than they were would be a good thing. I really need to look up the data from the Canadian town that tried it, it was really interesting.

 

Incidentally, the people claiming the increases will be matched exactly by inflation, that's wrong. Doubling the minimum wage isn't a matter of suddenly everyone's income doubles, which is roughly what it would take to match the minimum wage increase with inflation. Inexpensive things would get somewhat more expensive (not twice as much because they're not all labor costs), but suddenly their main customers have a hell of a lot more money. Their dollars wouldn't go quite as far as before but they'd certainly have more purchasing power.

 

My understanding is that in a lot of places in the states, you can work 30-35 hours at Minimum wage and still qualify for food stamps.  Isn't that basically subsidizing the wages so those corporations don't have to pay it? My general opinion is that if you are going to specify a minimum wage then people should be at least able to pay basic required expenses in the area that they live.

 

Of course it is. It's utterly preposterous.

 

 

I had to work with outsourced QA and developers. There will be no notice. Hangings will begin immediately.

 

Light everyone responsible for the documentation on fire. Also light whoever coded the bit that misattributed this quote on fire.

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Because when in the history of man has anything ever been solved by a thoughtful consideration and reworking of problematic things when you can slap a band-aid over it?

 

Man qua man is an irrational animal not prone to introspection, especially if it brings up the uncomfortable prospect that they benefited from something bad. So try to find the easiest way to link feel-good actions and something that will actually mitigate or avoid structural damage.

 

No it isn't optimal and I'd dearly love to do better, but that's the downside of a society being a continual process, and I don't see any way around that.

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I just thought of something. Toxn has dropped this post here and gotten Right to debate against Left, East against West. While he sits there like a non-aligned state in South Africa, chortling to himself, counting his Krugerrands.

 

Gentlemen. We have been had.

 

pffft. i know a RUSE to get us to reduce the amount of shitposting ICBMs in our inventory when i read one donward 

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I just thought of something. Toxn has dropped this post here and gotten Right to debate against Left, East against West. While he sits there like a non-aligned state in South Africa, chortling to himself, counting his Krugerrands.

 

Gentlemen. We have been had.

MWAHAHA!!!!

 

ONLY NOW DO YOU BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUE EVIL OF MY PLAN!!!

 

{spends next half hour spouting a pre-prepared monologue while the rest of the SH crew sneak in to save Donward}

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