Four Excuses Why Minimum Wage Should Not be Raised

~ Rant ~

Whenever I read arguments against increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage, those arguments usually trot out four, general, excuses for slave wages as justification.

The following is a link to an article from SHTFplan.com that is an example.

I've brought over the four excuses for slave wages that I'm referring to, from that article, and then I've gone through them, one-by-one, with my comments written below each excuse for slave wages.

From SHTFplan.com, Mac Slavo: "What Prices Look Like Before and After A Mandatory Minimum Wage Increase"
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/what-prices-look-like-before-and-after-a-mandatory-minimum-wage-increase_01042015

"1) Businesses will be forced to raise prices, which will essentially wipe out the benefit of any wage increase because while employees may make more money they’re now paying more for the same goods.
2) Businesses will have to cut back hours. If you force a business to pay 50% more per hour per employee and consider how much money that is, many will have no choice but to cut back hours, which effectively leaves the employee making the same amount of money.
3) Businesses will have to let people go. It’s simple. If their revenue stays the same but their labor costs go up a business has no choice but to consolidate its work force."
"One unforeseen problem is that many of the workers who will see a wage increase may be pushed into a higher income bracket causing them to lose access to public services like Electronic Benefits Transfer or other income assistance programs."

Ok, I'm going to take these on one at a time.

"1) Businesses will be forced to raise prices, which will essentially wipe out the benefit of any wage increase because while employees may make more money they’re now paying more for the same goods."

So what?

Prices have been rapidly rising while wages have stagnated for over 30 years now.

Prices will continue to rise and outpace wages, irregardless of an increase in minimum wage, because of inflation created by excessive money printing by the Federal Reserve, the out-of-control spending of the government, and the out-right greed of I've-got-mine-screw-you corporations and businesses.

"2) Businesses will have to cut back hours. If you force a business to pay 50% more per hour per employee and consider how much money that is, many will have no choice but to cut back hours, which effectively leaves the employee making the same amount of money."

Just what is it that the business are doing during those "cut back" hours that employees aren't there to produce the products and services of that business?

If a business cuts back it's minimum-wage employees hours, who's going to be there to do the work?

Are the businesses going to hire more minimum-wage workers, who work even less hours, to try to get the same amount of work done?

The wages are dollars per hour.

If the business need eight hours of work done, it's still eight hours at the same wage no matter if it's one employee working eight hours or eight employees working one hour each.

Yup. Eight people, working one hour each, to do the same eight-hour job that one person used to do.

Remember, the businesses are threatening to cut back hours but those businesses still need the work done so they are going to have to hire more part-time employees, working fewer hours, to get the same job done.

That means the businesses are still going to have to pay eight hours worth of wages, no matter how many hours they cut back from the employees.

And the more employees a business hires means the business has to cover more training and administrative costs.

Don't forget about Obamacare. That will limit how many employees a business will hire.

So, if a business cuts back employee hours but doesn't hire more employees to get the job done, then the business will have no choice but to cut back its hours of operation which effectively leaves the employer making less than if they had paid their employees a livable wage.

Ohhh. Right. Those businesses will just buy lots of robots to replace the employees.

Lots of expensive robots that will require the business to take out loans to be able buy those robots. Loans that will increase the overhead and therefor increase prices.

And since those robots replaced so many employees there will be fewer paychecks circulating through the community which will result in fewer customers to pay those higher prices to cover the loans taken out to buy those robots.

When businesses can't afford to pay off their loans they go out of business.

"3) Businesses will have to let people go. It’s simple. If their revenue stays the same but their labor costs go up a business has no choice but to consolidate its work force."

Again, so what?

Businesses today treat employees like disposable garbage and "let people go" at the drop of a hat.

Since the crash of 2008 businesses have let so many people go that those businesses are operating at or near skeleton staffing (they've already consolidated). That is why the labor participation rate is at record lows for so long. That is why chronic unemployment has lasted so long.

"But.. but.. the government says unemployment is 6%."

The way the government tallies unemployment figures is to not count the long-time unemployed people for political convenience.

Here's a hint. The Labor Participation Rate, as of January 5, 2015, pegs roughly 37 percent of able-bodied, working-age (16 to 64 years of age) people in the US as not having jobs. (Looking at the chart in the link, 100% minus 63 percent, equals 37 percent. A big difference from the 6% the government likes to trumpet.)

Thirty-seven percent unemployment.

37% unemployment!

There are roughly 300 million people in the US. Thirty-seven percent of 300 million is 111 million...  111 million unemployed, able-bodied workers.

Businesses have already been "letting people go" by the many tens of millions even at the current, sub-living standard, minimum wage.

Businesses will continue to "let people go" by the millions whether the minimum wage is increased or not.

"One unforeseen problem is that many of the workers who will see a wage increase may be pushed into a higher income bracket causing them to lose access to public services like Electronic Benefits Transfer or other income assistance programs."

What!?

You mean if minimum wage employees are paid more they may not need EBT cards and other forms of welfare?

Those employees might actually be able to support themselves!?

Imagine that. People getting off of welfare because they are able to support themselves with livable wages.

Oh. The. Horror.

We are told that there are too many people on welfare in America yet it seems that is exactly the way businesses and government want to keep things.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.

No Company Should Survive on Slave Labor

 ~ Rant ~  

If the only way a company can survive is by paying it's workers slave wages, then that company should not exist.

I've read lots of rational and reasonable sounding words to explain why companies absolutely must pay their workers slave wages.

What it boils down to is they are trying very hard to fool us into believing that paying unlivable wages is just good business.

Let's flip the situation around.

If the company costs too much and produces too little then that company, as if it were an employee, should be fired.

That company should not exist.

Why is it OK to pay slave wages, so employees are forced on to welfare, or in some cases, living on the street, just so the business can survive and continue to pay unlivable wages?

One argument to that is if the business goes under, then even more people will be unemployed.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... Go back and reread my sentence before that.

The employees are already on welfare or living on the streets. Being unemployed isn't much more of a change.

A truth of life: employees, at this level, are trapped with little to no prospect of ever escaping. The rare few who do, truly are rare and extremely lucky.

There was a time when being steady and reliable workers would ensure the employees would progress to better pay. Then with the extra money they could afford more education and progress even further. This upward mobility has been lost for most Americans.

Wages are too low.

The cost of living and the cost of education are too high.

I've written before how employers encourage welfare. There are systems in place to make sure people stay trapped in dead-end, slave-wage jobs because that is the only way most companies can survive.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.

Disposable Employers

 ~ Musing the Balance of Things ~ 

Employers view employees as disposable garbage; I wonder how long it will be until employees look at employers as disposable?

Think about it...

During this global economic depression, bosses have taken delight in reminding their employees of just how disposable the workers are.

"You don't like it!? Then quit. There's five million illegals that will do your job for less."

America is crumbling into unstable, part-time, minimum-wage, temporary jobs.

These jobs pay the same, most come with zero benefits, and workers have to depend on welfare just to survive.

So why stick around?

Jobs are coming back but most of them are coming back as part-time, minimum-wage, temporary jobs with no benefits.

So why stay in a miserable, part-time job working for a jerk of a boss?

There are millions other dead-end jobs out there; some of the bosses may even be decent enough to work for.

Eventually workers are going to figure this out and will begin treating employers as disposable.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.

Job Farce - Wanted - Liars and Cheaters

This Can't be Happening

Of the many barriers employers put in front of job seekers, at least two of the barriers strongly encourage lying and cheating.



#1 - Gaps in Employment History

Seriously!?

As of 2014, there has been six, straight, years of chronic, long-term, unemployment in America.

According to the Labor Participation Rate, just shy of 100 million, able-bodied, working-age (16 to 64 years of age), Americans are unemployed.

That is a third of the entire US population, or put another way - 30% unemployment!

Thirty percent is closer to the true unemployment figure of the US, not the phony, B.S., 5.8% that the government desperately wants you to believe.

With numbers like that, gaps in employment history are guaranteed. And quite often those gaps in employment are very long gaps.

In this global, economic, depression it is unreasonable for employers hold gaps in employment against job seekers but, unfortunately, that is exactly what employers do.

If you can't come up with an elaborate excuse, as to why you haven't been able to get another job in less than a day, you won't be hired let alone have an interview.

An elaborate excuse, a sugar-coated story, stretch the truth till it breaks... whatever you want to call it, it is fundamentally a lie.

Employers who demand you explain gaps in your work history are basically demanding that you lie to them.

If you can tell a good enough lie, you just might get the job.

That means employers are, effectively, looking for employees who are good liars.



#2 - The "Personality" Test

If you ever had any doubts that employers only see you as a disposable number, job application "personality" tests prove it.

A computer algorithm literally reduces you to a score; a number.

After you have fabricated lies to explain gaps in your employment history, you still have to cheat to score well enough on the personality test just to, maybe, have chance at being interviewed by another human being.

No guarantee of a job; just a slim chance that you will have an interview!

The farce goes farther when not even current employees can pass the personality test!!

These job application, personality tests have become so commonplace that seasoned job seekers know, if they really want the job interview, they have to cheat on the test.

Employers have overused personality tests to the point where it is encouraging cheating.

Employers that use these personality tests are, effectively, looking to hire cheaters.

If you look at the job application process of today, it really does seem like employers prefer to hire liars and cheaters.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.

Employers Encourage Welfare

Musings

If employers could, they would pay their employees nothing.

Employers say the employee is not worth paying a livable wage or the job is not worth paying a livable wage,... yet the job still needs to be done.

Since the employee isn't paid a livable wage, they depend on welfare to make up the difference.

Food stamps.

Subsidized housing.

Subsidized utilities.

Subsidized-everything that a living wage would have otherwise paid for.

So by not paying employees a livable wage, employers are encouraging welfare.

Welfare improves the businesses' profits because the cost of wages is spread-out among tax payers.

Since welfare boosts business profits, business taxes should go up to support the many millions of underpaid employees on welfare.




Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.

Zero Jobs, Another Recession and Economic Terrorists

The greatest domestic threats America has ever faced are the economic terrorists of Wall Street and Washington DC who have successfully driven the US into zero job growth and yet another recession!

What I read in recent news only makes my jaded cynicism even more acidic.

The end-of-month BLS's (Bureau of Labor Statistics) NFP (Non-Farm Payroll) figures came out and the "official" number of jobs created in the month of August - ZERO!

Despite all of the government's manipulated, fudged and fluffed-up numbers to make things look better than they really are the best they could come up with is zero!?!

Each and every month at least 100,000-150,000 new jobs must be created just to keep up with population growth. With zero job growth... that means the real job losses for last month were in the hundreds of thousands!!

And then there's this little nugget of information that makes the chances of finding a job even worse.

The "official" rate of inflation is around 3.6% (the real rate of inflation is around 11%). The "official" rates of GDP growth for the first quarter and second quarter of 2011 are 1.9% and 1%, respectively. Subtract the "official" rate of inflation from each of the two quarters' "official" rate of GDP growth and you have two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth - the very definition of a recession!

Take a closer look at these charts in USInflationCalculator.com, BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) and even including the White House's own figures and it looks very possible the recession may have started in the third quarter of 2010!

But you won't "officially" hear anything about the US being in another recession, especially not from the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), until after the election because it's just too damned politically inconvenient!

For the past three years the politicians have only paid lip-service to the jobs issue - the core structural problem of the US economy!

Oh, but now that it's an election year the jobs issue has suddenly become the campaign holy grail.

Obama's campaign speech - sorry, "bold jobs plan", later this week had to be rescheduled because the Republicans threw a hissy-fit!?

(It seems the Republicans would feel threatened if the President made his speech same night that wanted to have their presidential-candidate debate. Yet again, making it painfully obvious that there are absolutely no statesmen left in the US government.)

Now the big, stinking conflict is Obama's speech has been rescheduled to be on at the same time as the NFL's New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers season-opener.

Whoa, whoa. Wait.

A sitting President of the United States, supposedly the world's most powerful man, is allowing himself to be pushed around by a bunch of campaigning wannabes and a stupid football game!?

Excuse me if I have absolutely no confidence in whatever "bold plan" this kind of president may have!

Geesh! These are the bozos that have been entrusted with the stability and well-being of the United States of America!?!

Here's a simple jobs/consumer-driven-economy truth that seems to escape all the highly educated and overpaid policymakers in DC: consumers are people who have jobs - people who have jobs are consumers. But these DC clowns just don't get it!

We're so screwed.

Washington DC and Wall Street seem hell-bent to make things worse for the rest of us.

The government is starting to sue the big banks for damages caused during the mortgage meltdown. If the government sues for too much then the banks will need another bailout.

Do you see the perverse irony in this?

First, the US taxpayer has been stuck with bailing out the banks since 2008. Now if the government sues the banks too much then:

1. the banks will pass the lawsuit costs onto their US-taxpayer customers and...
2. the US taxpayer will be stuck with bailing-out the banks again and...
3. the politicians will vote and approve pay raises for themselves; the banksters will pay themselves outrageous bonuses; both politicians and banksters richly rewarding themselves for screwing over the US taxpayer with this colossal, catch-22 clusterfart!

The banks have also made it clear to their bought-and-paid-for political puppets that the US government is not to pursue any criminal prosecutions of the "too big to fail" banks or else the banksters will crash the entire US economy into oblivion.

What do the banksters care? The entire US could burn to the ground but the banksters will be fat and happy because they have all their fortunes stashed away in offshore accounts.

Folks, we've been sold a load of crap. The biggest terrorist threats to America aren't radical Muslims, "towel-heads" or "hay-rabs".

The biggest terrorist threats to America are the Wall Street slimeballs and their political lackeys who, in one hand, are holding a financial gun to the head of every man, woman and child in this country while, in the other hand, they have a tight grip on a noose around our necks! If we don't let them do as they damn well please they'll pull the trigger. If we do let them have their way they'll slowly strangle us till none are left!

Here's a short, recent history lesson on how to handle banksters.

Back around 2007-2008 when things were starting to go to hell here in the US, Iceland was having similar problems with their banks. The US coddled and rewarded the banksters while the people and government of Iceland told the banksters to kiss off!

The Icelandic banks failed, the country defaulted, and now, three years later, Iceland's economy is recovering and has healthy economic growth. The US, once you get past all the bravado and BS, during the same period of time has been sliding into an intentionally prolonged economic depression!

Zero job growth in spite of spin and manipulated employment numbers; most likely the US is well into another recession (as if we ever got out of the first one) and the perpetrators of all of this, the economic terrorists of Wall Street and Washington DC, are the greatest domestic threats America has ever faced.



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.


Related Links:
US Inflation Calculator - Current Inflation Rates: 2011-2011

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

John Williams' Shadow Government Statistics - Alternate Inflation Charts

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

Eye On Housing - Real GDP Growth – 2011 First Quarter, Third Estimate: Revised Slightly Higher, But Still Weak

http://eyeonhousing.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/real-gdp-growth-2011-first-quarter-third-estimate-revised-slightly-higher-but-still-weak/

BEA Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce - GDP GROWS 1.0 PERCENT IN SECOND QUARTER

Second Estimate of GDP

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdphighlights.pdf

WhiteHouse.gov - Advance Estimate of GDP for the First Quarter of 2011

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/28/advance-estimate-gdp-first-quarter-2011

About.com - Recession

http://economics.about.com/od/economicsglossary/g/recession.htm

Wikipedia - Recession

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession

About.com - What Is an Economic Recession?

http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/f/Recession.htm

NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Research

Bloomberg - Iceland Is No Ireland as State Free of Bank Debt, Grimsson Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-26/iceland-faring-much-better-after-permitting-banks-to-fail-grimsson-says.html

Seeking Alpha - Ireland, Iceland and Letting Banks Fail

http://seekingalpha.com/article/240617-ireland-iceland-and-letting-banks-fail

Bloomberg - Iceland Shows Ireland Did ‘Wrong Things’ Saving Banks

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/iceland-proves-ireland-did-wrong-things-saving-banks-instead-of-taxpayer.html

Help Wanted - Active DoD Top Secret Clearance Required

When reading through help-wanted ads sometimes I shake my head in wonder at the job requirements listed.

From an actual help-wanted ad:

(In hind sight I should have taken a screenshot of the help-wanted ad because the online link would eventually be replaced with current help-wanted ads. The best I could find now is an expired Google search result. "Expired" because the Google link went to the updated page where the ad had since been replaced. Oh, well. Blog and learn.)

"IT Specialist Position. Active DoD Top Secret Clearance with SCI Eligibility Required. US Citizens Only. EOE. Full Time Position, Immediate opening. Salary Range: Dependant [sic] on Capabilities and Exp. IT Specialist position requires a minimum of 5 years of experience in the following areas: A) Windows 2003/2008; Exchange 2007/2010 C) VM WARE; LINUX/UNIX E) Network Components F) DISA IA Compliance Abilities which are a plus: A) Former Military Experience B) CISSP; Security+ D) Training and other certifications..."

"Active DoD Top Secret Clearance" is required?

Really?

Why is a job that requires "Active DoD (Department of Defense) Top Secret Clearance" posted on a local rag's help-wanted page with all the less-than-top-secret job postings?

Wouldn't the "Active Department of Defense Top Secret Clearance" database contain, oh, I don't know, all conceivable and inconceivable background information (including job qualifications way beyond what are normally posted in help-wanted ads) on each and every person who is in the Active Department of Defense Top Secret Clearance database?

Why would some one even bother posting a help-wanted ad for any job that requires "Top Secret Clearance"? Just pick the job candidates from the Active DoD Top Secret Clearance list. Wouldn't people in the position of hiring top secret clearance personnel have access to such a list of prospective job candidates?

Given the job's "Active Department of Defense Top Secret Clearance" nature, wouldn't that sort of thing be something that's promoted from within those types of organizations? You know - a closed network of who's-who in the clandestine world of "on a need to know only basis" type of jobs.

Top secret clearance, eh?

Is there on-the-job training for that and does it come with a dental plan?



Comments
Please, keep your comments clean, civil and relevant. Cussing with foul language just for the sake of using foul language only proves the person to be an obnoxious, dull-witted fool.


Related:
A screenshot of the Google search result. I was hoping Google had cached the page but that turns out to not be the case.