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Hundreds of fast food workers are striking nationwide Tuesday, joining other workers in pressing for a more livable wage. But while some say $15 is a minimum needed to survive, some business owners say dishing out more pay would leave them struggling to keep their doors open.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fast-food-workers-strike-again-nationwide-for-15-an-hour
In New York City, rallies are being held in Harlem, the Financial District and Brooklyn in support of efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, reports CBS New York.
In Los Angeles, the local protests are organized by Service Employees International Union, and include fast-food, home-care and child-care workers, along with other "underpaid" employees, reports CBS Los Angeles.
"Is this the America we believe in? When someone works all day long and they still can't get by," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said during an early-morning rally in Downtown Brooklyn. "Does anyone believe that it's easy to get by in New York City on less than $15 an hour?"
Critics say a $15 minimum wage would obliterate opportunity and usher in higher taxes, but de Blasio said the opposite is true -- with more money to spend, low wage workers contribute more to the economy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:41AM
Exactly. I say this from a pinko-commie-lefty standpoint, but the whole $15/hr thing is a bandaid for the real problem which is a complete lack of decent paying blue-collar work in America due to the fact that we exported it all. McDonalds should be a training-wheels job for high school or college kids -- something to learn about work and earn a little beer money. The fact that people are actually trying to live on these types of crap jobs is the problem, not that they pay crap.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:53AM
They're not trying to live on it by choice, they're trying to live on it because they have no other choice if they want to live, as there are no other jobs.
(Score: 4, Touché) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:54AM
That's kind of exactly what I said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:35PM
With all due respect to you and AC I think what AC might have been getting at is there is a lot of Orwellian doublespeak and they're not "trying to live" they are "actually living" off minimum wage and its not "off minimum wage" but "off minimum wage and a ton of govt benefits like EBT etc".
So the hard core marxists, never seen a government program they don't want to expand, all want the minimum wage to stay at $7.25 or heck even lower it back to $3.35 because the government can take $20 in tax revenue and national debt and provide the employee with $5 of food stamps etc, meaning the cat ladies in the government get to spend the delta of $15 on accounting and paper pushing and salaries for social workers and all that crap.
Meanwhile the hard core capitalists want to eliminate socialism and have a fair and free market, so they want a minimum wage of $15/hr and get the government out of their employees lives. They find it offensive that someone like me, who buys nothing from McDonalds or Walmart, is having the crap taxed out of me so the .gov can pay the employees living expenses instead of their theoretical employer McD or walmart. Why should, say, the CEO of (insert your favorite real restaurant here) be happy that he's personally being taxed so that his competition doesn't have to pay a fair wage so the .gov can help his competition undercut his own real restaurant?
In the endless discussion of basic income, I think we're missing the forest for the trees that what is actually being rolled out in the united states is a new communist system of serfdom. You have no rights anymore and have to pretend to work a crap job for crap pay, but the .gov will pay the balance for your food, housing, medical care, cell phone, all that stuff. Its a new lifestyle model. Its been in progress for a couple decades and expands by a couple million people every year in the USA. Eventually we'll all work for minimum wage, which won't provide even a tenth of what it costs to actually live, but that's OK because we'll all be wards of the state. Note how this dovetails nicely with other government policies like not providing services or benefits to people without drug tests or with drug convictions, sure you can try to live "in the free market without government support" but if everyone is a ward of the government under the new socialism, you won't be able to survive. Then the .gov can implement endless social engineering on its "freeloaders" or "wards of the state". Expect all kinds of behavior codes, weird mixtures of neopuritan christianity vs SJW signalling, etc. On the positive side the economy looks ready for collapse and during the hyperinflation getting literal government cheese for all and McJobs for all might mean the difference between coming out the other side as a unified nation vs basically a collapse and civil war. So shitty as it looks, the new lifestyle model for american peasants is none the less better than doing nothing or several of the alternatives.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:06PM
So the hard core marxists... want... [stuff completely at odds with what they really want]
Meanwhile the hard core capitalists want... [stuff completely at odds with what they really want]
And NASA wants to rebuild Saturn V so it can take the green cheese away from the Moon Nazis.
Eventually we'll all work for minimum wage, which won't provide even a tenth of what it costs to actually live, but that's OK because we'll all be wards of the state.
Eventually, we'll run out of a low cost workforce globally and the competitive pressure on developed world labor will ease up. I figure that'll happen around 2050-2070, depending on what Africa does. Whether your country is on top or bottom of the pile at that time will depend in large part on the labor policies and legal infrastructure you have. A high minimum wage is a guaranteed way to have a lot of permanently unemployed and unskilled people.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:25PM
I think you're confusing what they want with weird corporate propaganda. If .com owns .gov, you're going to hear really weird nonsensical stuff from the two parties in .gov. My stuff makes sense, what the "lets boost quarterly profits" crowd says the politicians want is likely a pipe dream in the sense that it is formed completely out of large quantities of marijuana smoke.
Eventually, we'll run out of a low cost workforce globally
I donno man, the poor always reproduce the fastest leading to more poor, and for millennia whomever is the dominant empire has always been pretty good at creating new poor areas.
I kinda agree with your general outlook in that internationalization needs cheap infinite oil (which we don't have) and safe transport (no somali pirates on every coast in the world). Both trends look REALLY bad for the future. The future is containerships that can't run because of the cost of oil, which is good because every non dictatorship country and every dictatorship country not aligned with ours will pirate anything that none the less sails by. Emphasis on sails, BTW.
Africa is dead man walking. For a good laugh look at some population growth graphs showing Africa having 4 billion people by 2100 or other pure WTF. What they intend to eat and drink is carefully avoided in the discussion. Africa of the future is likely to have a lower, not higher, population than now. The Chinese are replicating parts of the western experience such as industrialization and having a great depression, and one other thing they're trying is imperialism and colonization, everyone's gotta try it once and get it out of their system, and they're trying it in Africa. So the African of the future is likely to be starved to death (aka not there) or be a Chinese immigrant along the lines of the former white output of South Africa.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:40PM
My stuff makes sense
To rehash, hard core Marxists want lower minimum wage because it decreases the power of labor. No, actually they want the other thing. Similarly, hardcore capitalists want higher minimum wage because they want higher wage costs. No, actually they want the other thing.
Before asserting that your stuff makes sense, make sure it makes sense.
Africa is dead man walking. For a good laugh look at some population growth graphs showing Africa having 4 billion people by 2100 or other pure WTF. What they intend to eat and drink is carefully avoided in the discussion. Africa of the future is likely to have a lower, not higher, population than now.
If that's true and it may be, then 2050 is closer to when wage competition eases up.
I kinda agree with your general outlook in that internationalization needs cheap infinite oil (which we don't have) and safe transport (no somali pirates on every coast in the world). Both trends look REALLY bad for the future. The future is containerships that can't run because of the cost of oil, which is good because every non dictatorship country and every dictatorship country not aligned with ours will pirate anything that none the less sails by. Emphasis on sails, BTW.
Oil isn't magically disappearing overnight, it'll just get more expensive. And shipping stuff by sea is really cheap even with more expensive oil. As to piracy, there's a fix for that, but it requires someone to get their hands dirty, say like the European powers did in the 18th and 19th centuries.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:03PM
To rehash, hard core Marxists want lower minimum wage because it decreases the power of labor. No, actually they want the other thing.
Um, OK.
I'll try some numbers. Some people like numbers. I'm cool with that.
Postulate it costs $14/hr income to live. Just stay with me here, its just a number, even if you'd prefer $30 or $3 or whatever. I just didn't want to use a variable "X" to keep the math simple, I want a nice easy number. Its sort of like a basal metabolic rate, if you eat under 1500 calories for too long you eventually die, you're burning 1500 from food or stored fat or you have genetically engineered green skin and do photosynthesis it doesn't matter you're burning 1500 to stay alive. Thats the concept here.
If the legal minimum wage is $7 then the welfare queen corporation pays $7 and the government chips in $7 worth of entitlements. No I don't want to debate the morality of entitlements in general or in specific examples or their costs. I just want easy math to get the point across. So the government being bloated and inefficient it needs to pull in like $70 worth of tax money from productive workers. So when someone eats a $5 chezeburger, it actually costs $6 to provide that burger and the government takes my money at gunpoint in the form of taxes, wastes most of it, and hands $1 my money to the worker because the workers employer is a no good Marxist commie welfare queen corporation.
If the legal minimum wage is $14, then the cheapest crappiest honest capitalist free market corporation pays all $14 of the cost of living for their human drone and the government chips in ... zilch. nothing. nada. Because this is a free market capitalist scenario not a "corporation as welfare queen" scenario. So the government being bloated and inefficient compared to the private sector and having to raise $0 for entitlement program expenses, it raises taxes of $0 ... oh wait, I'm liking this. So when someone eats a $6 chezeburger, it actually costs $6 to provide that burger and the person eating it pays the full price, not demanding that I, via the government taxes, chip in an extra buck or so. Also $70 of tax dollars not raised, means at least $70 of real economic activity, so the entire country is wealthier. Some people don't want america to be wealthy, they want america to fail, of course, we generally, unfortunately call them "leaders". So there's that problem.
So the marxists want a low minimum wage because they like higher taxation of the "right" people, employment by the .gov of cat lady types, and they like socialization of the economic system.
Meanwhile the free market capitalists want higher minimum wages because they like low taxes and the resulting economic growth and the effects of that growth, less government employed cat ladies telling them what to do, and generally feel its fairer to have people pay what stuff costs without government subsidies and also like not having to compete with competitors who are corporate welfare queens. Its just a win-win all around.
Now because .com and .gov have merged, AND because you haven't heard welfare queens squeal until you try to take away their .gov free cheese, you get endless 1984 style doublespeak about how "true scottsman" fallacy "real capitalists" want lower wages so the economy becomes ever more socialized and taxes always increase and free markets are evil and all that BS.
There are serious stock market type issues. For example, Walmart is a huge welfare queen and their entire sector is based on the idea that the government should pay about half their payroll costs. And that has certain stock price issues WRT comparison to something like IT, where the .gov doesn't chip in anything at all for your average $150K/yr software dev. So removal of corporate welfare would have some stock price impact etc.
Even more crudely, obviously walmart only has to pay millions to .gov reelection funds to get billions in payroll subsidies in the form of entitlement programs. So since they own the politicians they purchased, you can assume they're strongly against change.
You're not going to hear the whole story if you only hear the Marxist welfare queen corporation side in the multinational megacorporation controlled media.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:33AM
Mmm. Cheese. I know of a cheese stick in the fridge. I must eat it now.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by Kawumpa on Wednesday November 11 2015, @11:56AM
One major problem with exporting all or almost all skilled labor to other countries is that you also lose all creativity and innovation possible in this area. So while a company might gain a short term cost advantage it sacrifices a long term competitive advantage. On aggregate an economy loses much of its middle class and economic stability. Something that we can witness in quite a few industrialised nations, the US being a prime example.