Obama wants to raise minimum wage to NINE DOLLARS AN HOUR

[Branden Albert's Huge Balls]

@RyanLizza: Obama will call for raising the federal minimum wage to $9.00/hour.

[Loneiguana]

Ah conservatives. Complain about people on Federal assistance. Ignore the fact that 90 percent of people on assistance are in homes where someone works full time and then complain about people being paid too much when discussion of the minimum wage comes up. If you want people off federal assistance, they have to be paid more.

If a person works a forty hour week and still can qualify for Federal assistance than they are being paid too little.

And there is zero evidence out there that raising the minimum wage increases costs. Which is why none of you have actually posted any hard proof of that. From a business stand point, it doesn't make sense. If you are about to pay more in payroll, why risk losing business by increasing prices? There are multiple other ways to offset an increase in payroll that don't include raising prices that any smart company could take.

Also, if you can't afford to pay 9.00 an hour in a country where a cheeseburger can cost 10.00 then you are doing something wrong.

[Loneiguana]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I can tell you this - it's going to cost someone with a family a job at my firm.

We hire a lot of college labor to do basic prep work. It's fairly easy stuff but it's easy resume padder and we offer extremely flexible hours so we have a ton of college kids that take the jobs.

Jumping minimum wage to 9 will cost my firm about $40K (and that's conservative; even the kids we're paying $8 or more an hour are going to get sizeable bumps as well). We can't get rid of the college kids; they do the ministerial labor that has to get done. At the same time, we don't have the profit margin to just eat it. That money has to come from somewhere.

So the moment this passes, 4 of us are going to have to sit down and figure out which manager we're going to have to fire. There are 3 of them on the block and they all have families.

This is ****ing stupid. From both a macro and micro economic perspective it makes absolutely no sense. When applied to my company it will make no sense. This goddamn politician that knows nothing about the private sector continues to punish those of us that are desperately trying to keep businesses afloat to score cheap populist points.

This infuriates me. I'm going to have to fire trained, quality staff so I can give more money to my completely fungible staple monkeys.

And why? Because your populist Messiah doesn't know how the real world operates and you and the rest of your mindless followers won't call him on any of this idiocy.

This is reckless and it's irresponsible. It's politics ahead of pragmatism and it's par for the course for the empty suit you so blindly follow.

I call B.S.

If your company can meet demand with one less manager than you have right now, then why do you have that manager in the first place? Sounds like your company is wasting money hiring more people than needed to meet demand. I wouldn't blame minimum wage on the fact that your overpaying employees you apparently don't need.

[Branden Albert's Huge Balls]

Originally Posted by Loneiguana

Ah conservatives. Complain about people on Federal assistance. Ignore the fact that 90 percent of people on assistance are in homes where someone works full time and then complain about people being paid too much when discussion of the minimum wage comes up. If you want people off federal assistance, they have to be paid more.

If a person works a forty hour week and still can qualify for Federal assistance than they are being paid too little.

And there is zero evidence out there that raising the minimum wage increases costs. Which is why none of you have actually posted any hard proof of that. From a business stand point, it doesn't make sense. If you are about to pay more in payroll, why risk losing business by increasing prices? There are multiple other ways to offset an increase in payroll that don't include raising prices that any smart company could take.

Also, if you can't afford to pay 9.00 an hour in a country where a cheeseburger can cost 10.00 then you are doing something wrong.

And here is what you ****ing don't get.

Government is not going to force business into doing things the way they think they should be done. This isn't the USSR.

Obama wants to control the profit margin these places are generating so "the weath is spread around" because he's a communist son of a bitch who can't keep his nose out of everyone else's business.

While he may have good intentions (not really because he's a ****ing tyrant), and paying poor people more is a nice fantasy, in the end he's just gonna make it harder for the little guy because HE IS ALWAYS THE GUY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN, even if he's making 9 bucks an hour instead of 7.

[Branden Albert's Huge Balls]

Originally Posted by Loneiguana

I call B.S.

If your company can meet demand with one less manager than you have right now, then why do you have that manager in the first place? Sounds like your company is wasting money hiring more people than needed to meet demand. I wouldn't blame minimum wage on the fact that your overpaying employees you apparently don't need.

The bottom line is Obama is seriously threatening the ability of DJ's company to produce profit with this bullshit.

And guess what happens if the company goes kaput? A whole lot more people are out of work, which makes a few dumbasses making 9 bucks an hour seem pretty trivial, wouldn't you agree?

[J Diddy]

Originally Posted by mnchiefsguy

It was not an automatic wage increase for all. But the economics of raising the minimum wage put pressure on salaries across the board, up to a certain point. That is just reality....if your fast food worker is making $7.25/hr, and his immediate supervisor is at $9.00 an hour, do you think that the supervisor is going to be happy keeping the same pay rate?

Raising the minimum wage raises prices for customers also.

The irony of this is when the minimum wage was raised the last time I was in the exact same situation that you describe. I was managing a dominos and I had shift runners making $8, drivers making $5.25, and insiders making $5.50. What I had to do is move drivers to a buck under min wage (tipped employees), the shift runners stayed at 8, but a bonus system on performance was introduced. In the end, labor costs stayed about the same, but due to the bonus system, the store began running smoother.

Point being is there are creative ways to do things.

[stonedstooge]

Originally Posted by J Diddy

The irony of this is when the minimum wage was raised the last time I was in the exact same situation that you describe. I was managing a dominos and I had shift runners making $8, drivers making $5.25, and insiders making $5.50. What I had to do is move drivers to a buck under min wage (tipped employees), the shift runners stayed at 8, but a bonus system on performance was introduced. In the end, labor costs stayed about the same, but due to the bonus system, the store began running smoother.

Point being is there are creative ways to do things.

So bidnesses are to find creative ways to do things to stay afloat while the monstrosity known as the Federal Government wants more tax money to continue and expand on it's inefficiencies?

[Branden Albert's Huge Balls]

Originally Posted by stonedstooge

So bidnesses are to find creative ways to do things to stay afloat while the monstrosity known as the Federal Government wants more tax money to continue and expand on it's inefficiencies?

How else is Obama going to pay his dog handler $100,000?

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

It may be pandering but only the Democrats give a shit about those working Americans living below the poverty line. So, it is doing the bidding of the people that got you elected. Like the Republicans putting all the Wall street and billionaire loopholes in the tax code.

bullshit....typical Left wing bullshit...all of it

[kchero]

Originally Posted by petegz28

bullshit....typical Left wing bullshit...all of it

Pretty comical that lefties actually believe that dems hands are clean and they aren't involved in the same type of money grabbing scams that they always accuse repubs of. Ignorance is bliss.

[Mr. Plow]

Ugh

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Loneiguana

I call B.S.

If your company can meet demand with one less manager than you have right now, then why do you have that manager in the first place? Sounds like your company is wasting money hiring more people than needed to meet demand. I wouldn't blame minimum wage on the fact that your overpaying employees you apparently don't need.

It means that myself and the people that are still here are going to have to take up more slack.

Yeah, we can do it. It just means the most productive people we have are going to have to work even harder, spend less time at home and deal with more stress as more responsibilities are placed back on us.

We tried to expand our labor force to improve the quality of life of a great deal many of our long-term employees; now we're having to roll a lot of that back. In so doing, we're going to make our current employees lives more difficult while also uprooting the lives of a few more. And you think it's a good thing that we're going to have to do it again so that our college kids can have more beer money?

Call BS all you want - there's little doubt in my mind that you've never run as much as a lemonade stand. Trying to argue that there's no evidence that increasing minimum wage increases costs is just asinine - explain to me how it couldn't. The only way it won't is if businesses simply cut their staff. My business can't raise costs; we're under contract rates. So we're going to have to fire people. Other businesses can more easily raise prices than fire labor so that's what they're going to do. In either event, there will have to be a response to this.

So you get to pick one or the other, chief. This will either devalue the dollar or increase unemployment. There's not exactly a money tree handy that we can just go pluck more dollars from - the math is what it is.

The pressures these things are creating on small businesses are extremely real.

[jjjayb]

Originally Posted by RyFo18

I'd like to think that raising the minimum wage would encourage people to get jobs since it'd actually be worth more than the government support they get and thus we'll be more productive as a nation. I understand too that this hurts companies as well though, so it's a fine ground and it's tough to say what's right.

Stop paying unemployment for 99 weeks might encourage people to get jobs too.

[CoMoChief]

Great...My #4 value meal at McD's will go up 3 more dollars.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by jjjayb

Stop paying unemployment for 99 weeks might encourage people to get jobs too.

Ding!

The numbers on this are actually pretty funny. Go look up the rates of 're-employment' for people drawing unemployment benefits. There is a nice little spike in the first month or so of people that actually use the system as it's intended and get off it as quickly as they can. Then there's a steady trickle of people that are doing the same thing but are having less success and taking longer to come off.

Then in the last 3-4 weeks of unemployment benefit eligibility, re-employment number spike. You don't need to be any sort of scholar to see exactly why the numbers are doing what they're doing.

Unemployment will go up as soon as we stop encouraging it. The way to do that is to quit extending unemployment and not to take minimum wage jobs and make them cost more.

It's just more of the same garbage.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I'm trying to, but man this is a bad day for this kind of crap with me. We had to slash budgets and still decided to let go of 4 people with about 15 years of service time between them with us. 2 of them have families, one's a young girl that's been with us since college and got a nice salaried job (y'know, after coming on board as one of those minimum wage workers) and the 4th is just a damn nice guy. I sat in a room with 2 other guys and we fought for a day. And ultimately, after all the fighting, this really was the best we could do. We all took massive budget cuts in our departments to save another person or two (which will come out of our part-time labor force and end up being work back on our plates).

And to have done that so that we could eek out (I shit you not) $2,500 in projected profit in a company that generated $4 million in revenue last year...only to find out that this asshole's political garbage could make it to where none of it was good enough. I've just had it. It's staggering to me.

**** me I am tired of this man. I've disagreed with his politics but I've avoided reaching a level of personal animus and vitriol with him. I've tried to steer clear of questioning his motives and simply approach this with the belief that he and I simply disagree on the path to economic efficiency. Frankly, I can't manage it anymore. At this point, I harbor genuine personal animosity towards our President. It's the first time in my life I've ever been here and it's because he is simply militantly ignorant when it comes to how his policies will actually impact small business owners.

If he doesn't get this passed, it won't be for lack of effort on his part. He's trying to **** me and hundreds of thousands of people just like me. With any luck, the House will prevent it.

DJ, you're spot on with all this shit. Great posts, man. It won't affect us as much, but you can damn sure bet we're going to be reviewing payroll. When I was at Cabela's I had to review some of the Reduction in Force. It was the worst task I had there. By 10 miles, and all I did is review it after the fact. And Cabela's took VERY good care of those they let go. It's a bad situation, and I'm sorry for you buddy.

Originally Posted by Loneiguana

I call B.S.

If your company can meet demand with one less manager than you have right now, then why do you have that manager in the first place? Sounds like your company is wasting money hiring more people than needed to meet demand. I wouldn't blame minimum wage on the fact that your overpaying employees you apparently don't need.

You're and idiot.

You think that no one has any proof, well here you go. Local guy owns 3 hardware stores. 52 FT employees most of them work on the cheap. Obamacare says he has to provide Health Insurance which he currently does not.

Lets say a plan costs $350/employee/month. That's cheaper than my group plan.

350*12*52=$218,400

Or $100,000 penalty. He told me he's taking the $100,000 penalty, so there's that.

Then you add $2 wages to 52 Employees wage, you have

52*2000 hours*2 = $208,000.

This is a real guy with real employees in my town faced with real numbers that you're saying don't ****ing exist. But yet, over 3 small retail stores, he's faced with $308,000 overhead cost increase if they don't repeal Obamacare and he gets this bullshit min wage passed. I have no idea what his Gross Profit is after he purchases inventory, but I bet his margins aren't that big.

If you think there are no real consequences to this, you are either mind bogglingly stupid or a troll.