Why the Republicans just don't get it (Minimum Wage)

[Brown_Pride]

they really do run small margins.

for instance last quarter they made $116 billion, made a pre tax profit of 6 billion, and after taxes it's around 4 billion. it's like making something for 97 cents then selling it for a dollar.

That's the business model though. THey don't make money because they sell a few things with large margins, they make money because they sell a shyt ton of stuff at a profit, however small. FFS 4 billion in profits...are we not seeing that? Keep in mind that's last qtr 15B is more what they'll make in profit this year.
So alittle math here
yearly salary for minimum wage is 15080. ($7.25)
Poverty line in america for a family of 4 is 23,550 (http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/guides/federal-poverty-guidelines.html)

Using numbers from this report/article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/walmart-salary_n_4151131.html
475k of the 1 million store workers already make over the poverty line.
this leaves 525k (i'll assume they all make minimum wage)
I'll also assume they're all famlies of 4.
In order to make the "poverty line" you have to be paid 11.32 an hour. So walmart would have to give every minimum wage employee (525k) a raise of (11.32-7.25) = 4.07 (keep in mind not all those 525k are making minimum wage in actuality.
Now $1 a year raise equates to an increase of salary by $2080. So a 4 dollar increase to each worker is $8320 per worker a year.
Walmart will have to give 525k employees $8320 a year more to meet poverty level.
So 525k X 8320 = 4,368,000,000.
That's how much more walmart would have to pay its employees in order to make ALL of it's employees making less than poverty level wages. Keep in mind this is highballing their own numbers. Now if they make in AFTER TAX profit 15b a year...would they be forced to shut down, or even increase prices in order to stay "afloat"? Fuk now. Now if they wanted to continue to make 15B in profit then absolutely, but the argumetn that they HAVE TO increase prices is BS. They are profitable and could clearly afford the extra burden AND still be profitable. This is before any price increase or increases they might see in sales as a result of their own employees shopping at their stores now that they have more purchasing power.

 

[MMS]

Listen to you how you sound.

If there is such a dire need for the work than the company would benefit from spending extra money on training.

So how is the work getting done now and who is doing the work.

Once again where are all these jobs that are not being filled because there is no one qualified?

youd be surprised

there are guys in the financial industry that "make" 90k a year, but their workloads push 50-60+ hours per week

being an analyst is extremely competitive yet they get worked to death, training can "get" you the job. But training is gonna vary company to company depending on their business model

IE my company follows the Six Sigma plan started by Motorola, which pushes training on their workers to reduce loss and increase productivity. Yet not all companies adopt such models.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Fair enough, but some people seem to be under the impression raising wages, has no negative effects, and its important that they understand it does...

#2 if your logic was sound everyone would be making min wage now... obviously there are incentives to pay people more than min wage, whatever it might be. The jump to everyone will be paid nothing if there is no min wage isnt rooted in reality.

nor is the jump to increasing minimum wage to 100 an hour. I'll stop speaking out the side of my neck whey you agree to do the same.

 

[O.iatlhawksfan]

Thanks for posting this. I use to work at mcdonalds and I have to say I was not far from being broke. I did have to choose between fast food joints for the most part. It's rough living, reading thru thread that have to do with minimum wages I know most of you wouldn't understand. My gf work at mcdonalds and she got her two week check last night. She worked 71 hours and got paid $406 . They are paying her less than when I was working there! What kills me is that even tho the training is easy, it's very hard labor. Out of all the Jobs I have had, mcdonalds was the most energy draining and it's not even close. My girlfriend is always coming home telling me they're threatening to fire her and I get angry because it's a fukking minimum wage Job why are y'all being so demanding!?

 

[CrimsonTider]

youd be surprised

there are guys in the financial industry that "make" 90k a year, but their workloads push 50-60+ hours per week

being an analyst is extremely competitive yet they get worked to death, training can "get" you the job. But training is gonna vary company to company depending on their business model

IE my company follows the Six Sigma plan started by Motorola, which pushes training on their workers to reduce loss and increase productivity. Yet not all companies adopt such models.

nikka, people in finance and law are not working those crazy hours because there is not enough people out there to spread around the work load

They are working those hours in a large part because it's the culture of those professions and the bosses are not about to trim the margins by hiring another person and paying benefits because they are paying the current employees "well"

These professions have high turnover rates.

I'm sure @NaijaProdigy Redux @ocmfII and @Candor can attest to this

 

[DEAD7]

nor is the jump to increasing minimum wage to 100 an hour. I'll stop speaking out the side of my neck whey you agree to do the same.

The $100/hr point comes from the assertion(not made by you specifically) that raising the wage will not negatively affect the economy. If that is true(which we know it isnt), it would hold true regardless of the wage...

throwing the $100/hr wage proposal out there forces them to acknowledge the flaw in their logic.

The just adjust to match inflation argument is a sidestep of the real issue which is inflation. Inflation itself being the leading cause of the "real wealth" disparity.

 

[Rawtid]

What do you do when life happens? I understand what your saying but everyone doesn't have the capacity or even in the position to walk that sort of tightrope.

Get the shyt kicked out of me, work through it and keep at it. Life is always going to happen. that's why my focus is to stabilize myself financially so that I can have financial cushion when it does.

Again, I'm not living this way forever but for now it's what I have to do. There no amount of fast food, vacations, phones, shoes, etc that is more important that getting my money right. I can focus on material items after the fact...and I will get there. And when I do I'm buying cashmere, breh lol

 

[Brown_Pride]

The $100/hr point comes from the assertion(not made by you specifically) that raising the wage will not negatively affect the economy. If that is true(which we know it isnt), it would hold true regardless of the wage...

throwing the $100/hr wage proposal out there forces them to acknowledge the flaw in their logic.

The just adjust to match inflation argument is a sidestep of the real issue which is inflation. Inflation itself being the leading cause of the "real wealth" disparity.

so is throwing out slavery. In a perfect world labor would be free or very close to it and your profits would be like whoa. Me throwing it out there force you to acknowledge there should be some limitations on how low a company should go.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Thanks for posting this. I use to work at mcdonalds and I have to say I was not far from being broke. I did have to choose between fast food joints for the most part. It's rough living, reading thru thread that have to do with minimum wages I know most of you wouldn't understand. My gf work at mcdonalds and she got her two week check last night. She worked 71 hours and got paid $406 . They are paying her less than when I was working there! What kills me is that even tho the training is easy, it's very hard labor. Out of all the Jobs I have had, mcdonalds was the most energy draining and it's not even close. My girlfriend is always coming home telling me they're threatening to fire her and I get angry because it's a fukking minimum wage Job why are y'all being so demanding!?

damn son 406 for two weeks I can't even imagine that shyt. It actually upsets me to know someone is working that long and that hard for so little. Serious though you or her gotta get back into school.

 

[O.iatlhawksfan]

damn son 406 for two weeks I can't even imagine that shyt. It actually upsets me to know someone is working that long and that hard for so little. Serious though you or her gotta get back into school.

We're both in school. I go to a flagship university and she goes to a well respected community college. The whole "you chose this life thing" is Bull shyt

 

[Brown_Pride]

We're both in school. I go to a flagship university and she goes to a well respected community college

then you're doing the right thing. MOST people who went to college suffered a few years to make things better. It pays off though in less than 10 years i went from making Sonic Drive In money to more than what your girl makes in two weeks in one day.

IMHO without working fast food in college i would have starved, it sucked but like I said 4 years of noodles pays dividends....

 

[DEAD7]

so is throwing out slavery. In a perfect world labor would be free or very close to it and your profits would be like whoa. Me throwing it out there force you to acknowledge there should be some limitations on how low a company should go.

Only i believe the market will set these limits naturally, and we will all be better off.

But I see where you're coming from.

 

[-G$-]

nikka, people in finance and law are not working those crazy hours because they don't have enough people doing the work.

They are working those hours in a large part because it's the culture of those professions and the bosses are not about to trim the margins by hiring another person and paying benefits because they are paying the current employees "well"

These professions have high turnover rates.

I'm sure @NaijaProdigy Redux @ocmfII and @Candor can attest to this

depends what side of the business you're in.

from the trading side and my personal perspective- hours are more dependent of which products/markets you cover. so for example my average day is about 10 hours (7am - 5pm). i start early because some of my biz is dependent on europe and their hours in the morn. i leave at 5pm because it's not as busy in the US as it used to be. but when we were busy i was here til 6-6:30pm every night til the fed wire closes. i'm not consistently busy throughout the day but there is always stuff to be done.

i wouldn't go as far as generalizing and saying law and finance or all one way or another solely because of the culture. the culture is definitely part of it. but some of these positions really do entail an enormous volume of work. @MMSex isn't wrong. when you put it into an hourly perspective, an entry level analyst who makes 90-100k/year but works 60-70 hours a week and come in on weekends versus a entry level position in another industry at 40k/year w a 40 hour week, no weekends and guaranteed lunch hour every day, the comp makes sense.

that's at least my $.02 without reading the whole thread.

 

[Brown_Pride]

Only i believe the market will set these limits naturally, and we will all be better off.
But I see where you're coming from.

yeah that i've seen that limit estimated to hoover around the 3 dollar mark and i suspect it'd be even lower than that. They'd pay what they could get away with and as people will always take SOME income over NO INCOME wtf you gonna do?
The market is very much like fire, lest alone it consumes everything burns hot for a time and then dies. The goal is to keep a good fire going for a long time, not a hot fire for a short time. The market's appetite overpowers it's intellect, it will always try to consume everything, that's the nature of capitalism.

 

[CrimsonTider]

depends what side of the business you're in.

from the trading side and my personal perspective- hours are more dependent of which products/markets you cover. so for example my average day is about 10 hours (7am - 5pm). i start early because some of my biz is dependent on europe and their hours in the morn. i leave at 5pm because it's not as busy in the US as it used to be. but when we were busy i was here til 6-6:30pm every night til the fed wire closes. i'm not consistently busy throughout the day but there is always stuff to be done.

i wouldn't go as far as generalizing and saying law and finance or all one way or another solely because of the culture. the culture is definitely part of it. but some of these positions really do entail an enormous volume of work. @MMSex isn't wrong. when you put it into an hourly perspective, an entry level analyst who makes 90-100k/year but works 60-70 hours a week and come in on weekends versus a entry level position in another industry at 40k/year w a 40 hour week, no weekends and guaranteed lunch hour every day, the comp makes sense.

that's at least my $.02 without reading the whole thread.

The gist if the argument is @Rawtid is claiming the reason for the hours is because there are not enough qualified candidates In the marketplace to hire and people are working extra hours because of the lack of qualified applicants

I argued that the reason for these hours are the workload, culture and the people at the top not willing to trim profit margins by Hiring more staff vs using the staff there until they're burnout out.