Dem Rep: 'We Don't Want' Small Businesses That Can't Pay $15/Hour Minimum Wage

If $15/hour is good, then $50/hour would be better, and $100/hour would be fantastic, right?

How far up do you go before reality comes crashing in, and the inevitable collapse of your business happens?

 

Pssst. You can make more off of disability insurance and Social Security checks than you think. Retire now and improve Biden's unemployment figures.

 

Agreed.15 dollars per hour is good.

 

I think they just don't fundamentally understand how horrible more money is for poor people. Sure it is good for people sitting a round with no job to get a check in the mail, but the more money we pump into the system, the less important money is to the system. It is simple supply and demand. If I can get money by pumping my stock or borrowing it at virtually no interest, then I will do that instead of expanding my business or hiring new employees. Hell, I might just borrow the money, buy someone else's business, and fire a few people to offset the interest on the loan. It is only when money is harder to come by that businesses try harder to get it by expanding their own operations, hiring new people, inventing new things, developing new products, etc.

 

This quite clearly illustrates the misunderstanding of the tool we use to measure value. Proponents want to control the way value is measured. They think they can change the value of something by changing the dollar amount that represents that value. They'll immediately agree that a $100 dollar an hour minimum wage is nonsense, but they can never explain why within the context of their minimum wage argument. The word salad that ensues is testament to the existence of a contradiction between their ideal, and the way they actually act within the system.

 

It's not money that is horrible. It's the value the money actually represents. That value has to be produced. It doesn't exist simply because the dollar exists. If I take a dollar from person A and give it to person B without trading some value between the two of them would person A accept that dollar back in exchange for some actual value?

 

Good until reality comes crashing in and your business collapses.

Good for the companies that make the computer kiosk ordering systems, and the robots that flip burgers.

 

Not really in practice. The dollar went up in value between the depression and WWII simply because they were much harder to come by.

 

And the progressive Democratic solution is to destroy the small business and the jobs, putting both the owners of the small business and the employees of the small business on government assistance. It also often leaves local residents one less place to find the goods or services they may need.

One hellava plan.

 

It wasn't dollars that were "harder to come by". The government can print them at whim. It was the labor and resources that were harder to come by. Households provide firms with labor, land and capital. Firms provide households with goods and services. The value of each is traded with dollars as placeholders of value.



After the war, the households were depleted of labor land and capital, and so the firms had to compete for them. That competition increased the price in dollars of the value they were purchasing. That's because the value increased, not the household's access to dollars.

 

People who are not able to produce $15/hr value should apply for disability benefits.

That depends whether or not in your state sweatshops are legal or not. My point is that they shouldn't exist. If you want to hire employees that produce less than $15/hr, that's up to you. But you MUST pay them at least $15/hr, If you don't, even if they produce only $1 per hour, you are exploiting them.

Yes! If somebody wants to volunteer for community service, great. But volunteers are NOT employees. Nor are unpaid interns, in many businesses, for example.

 

Value is produced when an entrepreneur uses his capital in a way that other people value.

I just heard a story recently about a guy that was buying used ski gondolas. He had no idea how he was going to use them, but recognized they had a value that other people did not. He accumulated quite a number of them. Covid hit, and he realized that food service providers needed outdoor dining solutions. He marketed his gondolas to them, and massively increased the value of his used gondolas. This allowed food service providers to in turn continue to produce value. It was the idea that increased the value of the gondolas. Not the value of the dollars he traded away for them. None of that increase went to the people who originally sold him the gondolas, nor should it.

 

Why do you assume they are disabled? Is a full time student looking for pizza money disabled? Is a grandmother looking for extra cash to spend at the casino disabled?

Your point is that you seek to control what people are allowed to agree to produce. You don't get to control that. People will decide on their own no matter what you think.

Why can't someone volunteer to work for 10 dollars an hour?

 

Let's say you have a $20 in your pocket and you pass by the donation bucket. You don't want to donate the full $20. You only want to donate $10. Is it wrong to ask the charity to give you back a $10 for your $20, or is it better if you don't donate at all? Should it be illegal to donate less than $20?

Why would labor be any different? Let's say my opportunity cost for donating labor is $40 and hour. That is to say, I could use that hour to produce $40, or I can donate that hour and make zero. Is it wrong to decide, that I'm willing to donate $30 an hour to the employer and ask that they pay me the $10 dollar difference?

That's exactly how I'm employed right now. (with different figures of course). I can use my labor to work for an employer as a technician and make a heck of a lot more per hour than I'm making now. Instead, I choose to instruct others how to perform my labor at a community college. The pay is much less, but I perceive something other than financial value for my labor. I'm helping others to learn a skill that will allow them to produce much more than $15 dollars an hour in labor. Is that something I should be forced to do for free, or not at all?

 

Wait a minute. Focus! You said "people unable to produce more than $15 an hour of value". You're telling me that a grandmother is not able to produce $15/hr for the casino?

If you are not paying attention to even your own arguments, why would I expect you to pay attention to mine?

A volunteer is not an employee. Like interns. They are not employees.

 

Grandma's expectation is not to give the casino any money, but that's beside the argument. Grandma is not able to produce $15 an hour, but neither is she at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. Her living expenses were provided for by the 40 years she worked prior to now. What Grandma is willing and able to produce is $10 an hour directing calls and taking appointments for a pest control company. Her labor could easily be replaced with an automated system, but the company recognizes at most a $10 an hour of value in having an actual human answer the calls. Should it be illegal for Grandma to work a 40 hour week so that she has 300 bucks to spend at the casino on Friday? Would it be better for the company to utilize an automated system that generates 0 taxable income, or better for Grandma to be allowed to work for a wage she agrees to?

Its easy to blame others for your own confusion. At no point did I imply that Grandma was producing $15 dollars an hour for the casino, for example, but that didn't stop you from demonstrating your reading comprehension. When you buy something is your hourly wage a factor in the value that the seller receives?

You should try and sell that story to my buddies in the military. They will laugh. Should we stop paying them since they volunteered for service?

 

What an unbelievable tortured logic. If Grandma and the company agree to volunteer to work for $10, they can do so. But she's not an employee. And such an unlikely scenario must not serve as precedent to keep millions of people who work full time but are exploited in a sweatshop. Or businesses that contribute nothing to the economy because they can't even produce enough to pay a worker the minimum wage they need to enjoy the most basic living standard.

You didn't "imply" it. You explicitly SAID it by using it as an example to support your statement. And I quoted you saying it.

 

Perhaps you can research the meaning of the word your struggling with. Employment is voluntary.

No, you did not quote me saying that. You quoted me saying that Grandma wants to spend her cash at the casino. Grandma can drop $300 an hour at the casino. Does that mean she needs to produce $300 dollars an hour in order to patronize the casino?

 

There is nothing that directly ties the wage of the worker to the benefit to the society their labor produces. If I hire 20 drivers at 10 dollars an hour to deliver meals to shut in seniors and that business produces a profit, that profit margin does not need to be large enough for all driver's wages to be increased to 15 dollars an hour for my business model to be beneficial to the people that take advantage of it. Force a wage increase on this model, and 7 drivers will get laid off, each driver will produce less value as a percentage of delivery, and fewer people will get their dinner.

 

Additionally, what happens to that unskilled labor that is simply not worth $15/hr? Do some or all of those jobs get eliminated? Do those people's hours get cut? Does the business eventually go under from trying to keep their unskilled labor employed but having to raise their prices to a point that people simply don't do business with them anymore? Do those people lose their benefits? and on and on and on

 

20 drivers at $10/hr can each deliver 3 meals an hour. The meal costs 10, and the delivery fee is 4. This produces 840 dollars an hour to cover the expense of the meals ($600) and the cost of the labor ($200) plus $40 an hour of profit. (let's ignore fuel, vehicle maint, etc for the sake of simplicity).

When we increase the wage to $15 dollars an hour, the drivers can't simply deliver more meals per hour. The cost of their labor is now $300 dollars which leaves us $60 dollars short. We can lay off workers but that doesn't solve the problem because that produces fewer deliveries. The only thing that can happen is an increase in the delivery fee. That has to go up to $5.67 just to get back to the way things were. That's a 30% increase in the charge, and an 11% increase in the overcall cost of the meal. An increase in the cost of the meal isn't going to increase the demand for meals, it will have the opposite effect, so eventually some of those drivers will be laid off because there will be fewer than 60 meals ordered an hour for them to deliver.

How does that help the people who need meals delivered to them? How does it help the drivers that get laid off? How does it help drivers that keep their job, but now have to pay more to have meals delivered to them?

 

So WHAT?

Oh... I see. You think that "volunteer" is the same as "voluntary". Because they kinda sorta sound a bit the same, right?

Looks like you should research all three words. Noting the difference between "volunteer" and "employee". Obviously you have never run a business, since you don't know the difference.

????

What the f.... hell does that have to do with this? I'm talking about minimum wage. Not about minimum bets.

Looks like you think that betting in a casino means you're "employed" by the Casino. But that would be too absurd.... Even for you.

 

No, she can't. The minute they give her $1, she is an employee. The way companies get around that is to make her a subcontractor. Then they can pay whatever they want and don't have to give her benefits, or any other non-money compensation. This is also a point of contention with Democrats. You can't have it both ways. The higher you make min wage, the more companies will start making their employees subcontractors or just get rid of them completely. It's better for everyone to have a low minimum wage where employers will provide the going rate wage + benefits. Subcontracted employees also have a tendency to not pay taxes then get into trouble with the IRS.

 

So you're not aware that people who volunteered service in the military are paid? More research required.

 

Military service is voluntary and relies on people to volunteer their service in exchange for a less than minimum wage job. I guess he believes that these people are called voluntarees?