Minimum Wage

[Kanzler]

It's common sense really.. If you can't answer this question then you don't know how economics works. If the minimum wage would go up everything would go up, it's called inflation. It's always happened and it wouldn't stop now. As for companies firing.. As I said earlier, companies can't afford to keep employers employed with a livable wage, especially if it's including benefits. So they would either have to cut benefits or let some go. Not saying they would fire all their employers but they surely wouldn't be able to afford to keep them all either. So sacrifices would have to be made.

Yeah, well sometimes things can defy common sense - we would call them counterintuitive. It's not like every economic theory and prediction has always been confirmed in the past.

This guys: https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2015...age-does-not-automatically-lead-to-inflation/

mentions that there's no clear relationship between wage hikes and inflation. It seems that "if the minimum wage would go up everything would go up" is a bit simplistic, since it doesn't seem to be reflected in empirical evidence. There might be a bit of inflation, but it might not be enough to offset the income gains. The same goes for employment as well. If raising the minimum wage by 30% causes a 5% reduction in employment for minimum wage workers, the average minimum wage worker is still benefiting.

 

[ShinyUmbreon189]

The problem isn't that taxes are too high, though, it's that taxes pay for things we don't need anymore...like uber-military and Republican salaries.

America does need a military, that's an obvious one but we don't need the military protecting other countries, that's a waste of tax payers money. Know what else is a waste of tax payers money? The war on drugs and the prison system! Yeah, let's just imprison non criminals and force the tax payers to pay for it! Oh, and did I mention the trillions we dump into the pharmaceutical companies?! Or a nice chunk that's going into politicians pockets?! I can keep the list going of pointless shit they spend with tax payers money on. Yeah, its not like we don't need our money anyways, let's just raise the taxes more and give it away.. That was sarcasm btw.

 

[Midnight shadow]

It's funny this subject is brought up, because pay is an issue I'm dealing with at work right now. I work at a sports centre where the company that runs it hasn't increased the pay of its employees in 9 years. Bare in mind that the centre have steadily increased their prices every year during that time and yet wages have stayed the same. Just to put this into context, 1-to-1 swimming lessons used to cost £16 per half hour, of which the teacher got £9. Now, the price of those lessons is £26 with the teachers still only getting £9. Where has the extra money gone? On top of this the company have been cutting jobs to save on wages, so are spending even less money on their employees while upping their work load.

Now, fortunately for me the government have just introduced the "national living wage" for people over 25. In the UK the minimum wage is done by age groups, with under 21s having a lower minimum wage than over 25s. This makes sense as typically under 21s are still living with parents and therefore have less out-goings to worry about. Anyway, the national living wage is at £7.20 an hour which was a big increase from my previous £6.75 that I was on before.

I can live off that, barely but am I worth more than that? One of the biggest issues we have at our centre is constantly being short staffed. This is down to 3 factors:

1. Low pay. We're still on minimum wage which doesn't justify the amount we do at work and the unsociable hours (centre opens at 6:30am and closes at 11:pm, even at the weekend)
2. Large work load. As mentioned above, the company have been cutting jobs to save on wages which means the remaining employees have to do more to keep the centre running. One of my manager's duties used to be covered by 4 people, but now she has to do it all herself, and yet her wages have stayed the same. Does that sound fair?
3. Long hours. Because we are on a rotating shift pattern we work alternate weekends. If it's our weekend off we work a 12 hour shift on the Friday. If it's our weekend on, we work a 12 hour shift on both Saturday and Sunday. That's right, 24 hours work in a single weekend. And this is every other week we do this. Being on minimum wage doesn't justify that at all.

So what needs to be done? We believe that increasing wages would help bring in more staff because right now we can't retain our staff. I've been there 2 years now and in that time we have lost 14 full time lifeguards and 7 part time lifeguards. That is insanely high turn-over for staff, and it's due to the 3 points above. If they increased the wages they could justify the long hours and heavy work load and be able to retain their staff better.