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posted by janrinok on Monday December 08 2014, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the consumers-with-more-money-to-spend dept.

NPR (formerly National Public Radio) reports:

By a 44-5 vote, Chicago's City Council set a minimum-wage target of $13 an hour, to be reached by the middle of 2019. The move comes after Illinois passed a nonbinding advisory last month that calls for the state to raise its minimum pay level to $10 by the start of next year.

The current minimum wage in Chicago and the rest of Illinois is $8.25. Under the ordinance, the city's minimum wage will rise to $10 by next July and go up in increments each summer thereafter.

[...]The bill states that "rising inflation has outpaced the growth in the minimum wage, leaving the true value of lllinois' current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour 32 percent below the 1968 level of $10.71 per hour (in 2013 dollars)."

It also says nearly a third of Chicago's workers, or some 410,000 people, currently make $13 an hour or less.

[...][In the 2014] midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota approved binding referendums that raise their states' wage floor above the federal minimum.

Media Matters for America notes that The Chicago Tribune's coverage tried to trot out the *job-killer* dead horse once again, to which the response was

According to a March 2014 report(PDF) prepared for the Seattle Income Inequality Advisory Committee titled "Local Minimum Wage laws: Impacts on Workers, Families, and Businesses", city-wide minimum wage increases in multiple locations--Albuquerque, NM; Santa Fe, NM; San Francisco, CA; and Washington, DC--produced "no discernible negative effects on employment" and no measurable job shift from metropolitan to suburban areas.

Related:

Seattle Approves $15 Minimum Wage

Mayor's Minimum Wage Veto Overridden by San Diego City Council

States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Monday December 08 2014, @09:10PM

    by Fauxlosopher (4804) on Monday December 08 2014, @09:10PM (#123860) Journal

    From http://viral.buzz/seattles-15-minimum-wage-crash-for-many-their-new-wage-is-zero/ [viral.buzz]

    Kathrina Tugadi owner of Seattle’s El Norte Lounge, no longer hires musicians for her restaurant, she said she can’t justify expenses that don’t directly “add to the bottom line.” And, she says, hours will have to be cut: El Norte Lounge plans to stop serving lunch and only serve dinner.

    Pagliacci Pizza, a Seattle-area pizza chain, is moving its call center and some of its production facilities outside the city. That’s a lot of job loss, a lot of new people with a new wage of ZERO.

    While it seems counter-intuitive for those like myself who have struggled to live while working at a minimum-wage job, raising the cost of labor raises the price of goods and services - and the increased labor costs can mean that jobs that were possible to provide at (say) $10/hr are not possible to provide at $15/hr. Absent government largess (sourced from money taken out of productive persons' pockets), businesses succeed when they make a profit, and fail when they are not making a profit. A failed business also provides only $0 wages.

    Rather than focus on the minimum wage as a mechanism to force an economic fix that cannot mathematically work, perhaps we should start by looking at why the purchasing power of the US dollar has almost completely evaporated over the last generation, and continues to degenerate. (Consider the melt value of the silver in a 90% silver 1964 half-dollar when compared to its face value of fifty cents. Then consider this problem only gets worse the farther back in time you move the timeline's start.)

    The barriers for bootstrapping one's own self [mindfully.org] are also continually increasing. I was fortunate enough with my last job to obtain a six-figure salary in a field still mostly untouched by heavy-handed government restrictions, yet Texas wants people who might want to follow the path I took to add to the burden their onerous restriction of becoming a licensed Private Investigator [techrepublic.com].

    There are many reasons many people are suffering economically; however, a low minimum wage is far removed from the root of the problem.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:07AM (#123950)

    You're saying that these businesses had an excess of people on the payroll and they could magically be excised without any effect on the business?

    I'm calling bullshit.
    In these companies, there are now tasks left undone and the level of service to customers has gone down.
    IOW, the slash-and-burn types are now less competitive.
    (Their competitors had to deal with the very same change.)

    N.B. Costco is in the same business as Wal-Mart but, unlike Wally World, doesn't pay poverty wages.

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:05AM

      by Fauxlosopher (4804) on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:05AM (#123977) Journal

      You're saying that these businesses had an excess of people on the payroll and they could magically be excised without any effect on the business?

      I said no such thing. Both examples I quoted had definite impacts on the related business: cutting both amenities and business hours of operation; moving business operations out of the area.

      I don't believe I can respond properly unless you restate your premise after correcting the error.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:57AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09 2014, @01:57AM (#124002)

        You didn't mention how the COMMUNITY was affected.
        I'm guessing they barely noticed the difference.

        I'm going to assume that a competitor (who did not slash and burn) got all the business that the incompetent business owners lost.
        I'd bet those competitors were -already- getting the bulk of the business.
        They are now able to expand and hire the former employees of the businesses that couldn't keep up.
        (This assumes, of course, that those people are worth having.)

        Sounds to me like the market at work.

        Additionally, I have a post on this page that mentions that moving from a sub-$8 wage to a $10.10 wage would add 1c to a $16 item at Wally World.
        I also mentioned here that Costco competes with the company known for worker abuse and Costco doesn't pay poverty wages.

        Success is not guaranteed and change is inevitable.
        You've simply pointed to companies whose business models failed.
        Rigid, inflexible, poor adaptability--you pick the term.
        This stuff happens all the time and for all kinds of reasons.

        ...and, as mentioned in the summary, the pros have said "no discernible negative effects".
        Again, you are pointing at outliers.

        ...meanwhile, workers who have more money spend it into the community, increasing the Multiplier Effect.

        -- gewg_