$15 an hour?

[dryheat]

Yeah, when I was a kid my first job paid $2.10. On top of trillions of dollars being dumped into the economy kids should get fifteen dollars and hour? It's not going to happen. Some how, some way someone will have a rebuttal.

[Major Tom]

Any mom and pop business cannot afford to pay their employees $15 per hour! This is just a sly undercover way to destroy the American way of life! Most mom and pop places hire students and underage kids still living at home.

[togor]

Stuff does cost more than it did back then.

My son worked at a target for a few years, making about $12/hr. Apparently they're close to $15 now and it hasn't ruined their business.

[lyman]

Target averages what, $3-500,000 K a week on slow stores, several million a week in larger areas?

easy to absorb some of that payroll when your sales are $2mil a week or more,

vs a mom and pop store doing as much in a week as a Target will do in a day or a half day per week


just as an example,

I ran a store that did $180K a week,
had to manage payroll by sale per labor hour, (generally ~$100 hr, as in 180K gave me 1800 hrs to use in labor, (regardless of the cost of labor)
company , before I left , switched to payroll %,

so I had to schedule based on the cost of payroll based on the $$ spent on payroll, and that included me, the store manager, and a Pharmacist,,,,

labor hours dropped to 950-1050 depending on the week,

missing that goal (as in making the numbers) was not actually a goal, you did it or else,



left there and went to another company were my past weekly sales were what we did on a good Sunday or Saturday,,,,

and hours per store were at a much better rate (generally 9% vs 6%,) due to the amount of sales and profits that generates

[jcountry]

Stuff does cost more than it did back then.

My son worked at a target for a few years, making about $12/hr. Apparently they're close to $15 now and it hasn't ruined their business.

It's an economy of scale thing.

Smaller businesses can't produce a product or service profitably at smaller economies of scale...

$15/hr will absolutely decimate small businesses and make inflation explode.

[dryheat]

Stuff does cost more than it did back then.

My son worked at a target for a few years, making about $12/hr. Apparently they're close to $15 now and it hasn't ruined their business.

Things do cost more. And there's loads of money floating around. I understand some people being rich but how can this many people be rich. I consider $60 thousand a year rich. $60K is considered a "comfortable" income these days. I wouldn't know what to do with that much money. So, I am not the one to debate this. $15 an hour is going to get shot down this time, but it will be back. I like things to stay the same.

[Vern Humphrey]

Come to Arkansas -- every little town in the Ozarks has a shirt factory. And every one is closed. As labor costs went up, they weren't profitable. Go to a gas station and wait for someone to come out and say, "Fill 'er up, Sir?" Another common job for a young kid that has vanished forever.

As the minimum wage goes up, jobs go away -- and chances for the poor to get a foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder go away with them.

And yes, things DO cost more -- partly because labor costs more. Understand that if the minimum wage goes to $15.00 an hour it isn't just the people who make minimum wage who are affected. Forty two point four percent of American workers make less than $15,00 an hour and they will ALL get raises. And what about the people who make $15.00 now? And the people who make just over $15.00? Won't they have to get raises, too? Everyone will get raises. And inflation will soar.

And that will put us right back where we started -- "You can't raise a family on minimum wage -- we have to raise the minimum wage!"

And the whole cycle will start again -- but with fewer and fewer job opportunities for the poor.

This is called the Poverty Trap -- and it explains why, more than half a century after the Great Society kicked in, that the poverty rate is still the same as it was then.

[Mark in Ottawa]

For context, $15 per hour for 40 hour work week equals $31,200 per year. According to the US Census, the Median household income was $68,703 in 2019. According at another US Government entry that I found, the "Poverty line" for a family of four is $26,500. Implicitly then, the poverty salary would be $12.74 or less. Looking at it mathematically, $15 per hour does not seem excessive

[Vern Humphrey]

For context, $15 per hour for 40 hour work week equals $31,200 per year. According to the US Census, the Median household income was $68,703 in 2019. According at another US Government entry that I found, the "Poverty line" for a family of four is $26,500. Implicitly then, the poverty salary would be $12.74 or less. Looking at it mathematically, $15 per hour does not seem excessive

That's on the assumption that simply by waving a magic wand, we can get people out of poverty. We can't. Raising the minimum wage has no effect on poverty -- raise the minimum wage now, and check back in five years and see if it had any effect on poverty.

[lyman]

Kroger went thru a phase years ago where they realized the contracts had the starting rate too low,
and the union was not smart enough to look either,

we had trouble hiring since any fast food place would hire , with the same benefits, at 2-3$ an hour higher than we could pay per the contract rules,

so they actually bargained with the union to raise payroll, (and found a loophole in this state to open non union stores with a better payroll)

everyone that was below rate got a raise, then the new hires were brought in at the new rate,

and yes, payroll requirements were still the same

[togor]

Re: Arkansas shirt factories.

Can think of lots of reasons those factories might close, especially if small, and a long way from major markets, and without cheap transportation or economies of scale when buying cloth. Putting workers wages at the top of the list seems harsh, especially when it was Bill Clinton of Arkansas who paved the way for China to enter the WTO (in W's administration), and bam! just like that, the bottom fell out for the US sewn garment industry. Did anyone ask those people if they wanted trade rules changed in a way that would end their jobs? Kinda doubt it. But it is a certain kind of 90's Republican thinking to argue that the people near the bottom earn too much.

[lyman]

actually,
around here,

they were built long ago in areas where the labor was cheap, and reliable

years later , after some unionization and then moving stuff overseas, they closed,

my Mother in Law retired from Klopman Mills (fabrics) and a lot of folks I knew were workers in other areas of the industry,

one guy I used to work with, his wife worked in a plant that was contracted to cut out patterns,

the shipped the fabric in, the ladies cut out the patterns, then shipped the cut fabric overseas to sew into shirts,
and that was profitable at the time for that company,,

the markets were soft, and plants were closing before W's admin

[Vern Humphrey]

Funny how Togor talks about Bill Clinton, a Democrat, as if we should be supporters of him.

And funny, too how opening markets to China drove shirt manufacturing to Central America.