You are not privatizing profits if you tax the JCs more to pay it. I have stated, repeatedly, that you fund it by progressively taxing income more. Is there a reason why you continue to argue that it would be funded by taxing workers instead of JCs?
And we both know raising taxes on “JCs”, for any reason, is a non-starter in Shiny-land.
Steve
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There is a reason for that. The research by the CBO is across the entire country. The states that have a minimum wage of $7.25 have been keeping their states on the poorer side. It would be a shock to go FAST upward to $15.
My state has a minimum wage of $14 soon to be $15. We are a rich state. We do not retard our economies to serve the rich by not serving the rich or the workers.
Of course you can dig up political shills saying otherwise but the results in CT are different. The higher wages make for a wealthier state.
If a state is paying a min wage of $7.25 and small businesspeople can not afford $10 I do not care. Why should I? Those small businesspeople have been lobbying to screw the state and workers for their own benefit. Not nice people at all.
Caring starts with the right people doing the right thing in the first place. That is missing.
The first thing they did about that SUPPOSEDLY is put in the kiosks.
The truth the planners for MCD and the others knew people would prefer the kiosks. Further the companies knew in their planning they would need to hire more labor at higher rates.
Not sure why pointing at fast food joints charging $13 for a meal is a good argument. It is not about us boomers. It is about the younger generation the main patrons of fast food making more money and having more upward mobility.
It does not matter that our generation had little clue about doing the right thing by people or the economy. We are not the only generation any longer.
BTW kids paying $13 for a meal mean your property taxes will be less. MCD will pick up more of the bill. Rents for those kids making more money rise. Tax receipts from the younger generations are rising. Directly and indirectly over the next two decades we will have a better growing economy.
THis has turned into a minimum wage thread. So Let’s look back to 1970.
Minimum wage was was $1.60 an hour.
On average a man working full time made $9180 annually.
Rent was $108 a month. Gasoline was 36 cents/gallon. Food maybe $50-60 a month. A first class stamp was 6 cent.
Today minimum wage in my state is $12.00 an hour. The federal minimum wage is still at $7.25 I believe. THe local WalMart start a new employee out at $13.00 an hour. Rents are $800-900 for a one bedroom apartment in my town. Gasoline $3.00 a gallon. I spend $250-300 on grocery for one person a month.
I don’t think minimum wage is keeping up with inflation over the past 50 years. Quite a few state allow just the federal minimum wage which methinks is a slave wage now.
A minimum wage map here:
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Oh it definitely is a slavery wage.
The guys will say, “no one is paid $7.25” What that means is no white males are paid $7.25. Women and minorities are shoved at $7.25.
It is purposely racist and misogynistic.
Florida the min wage is just over $5. Impressive how good people are.
Or not.
https://www.minimum-wage.org/wage-by-state
Florida’s state minimum wage rate is $11.00 per hour . This is greater than the Federal Minimum Wage of $7.25. You are entitled to be paid the higher state minimum wage. The minimum wage applies to most employees in Florida, with limited exceptions including tipped employees, some student workers, and other exempt occupations.
DB2
And we have a progressive tax system currently that appears to be very easy to bypass by the wealthy, unfortunately. And the lunatic fringe in the House just proposed to get rid of the “progressive tax system” (their actual words) and replace it with a consumption tax. Which is terribly regressive in nature.
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DB2 another nice catch. Thanks.
Honestly I read two weeks ago it was $5 and change. But the piece I was reading was a political hack piece. Fully noted. BTW interesting that the wage is $11. Florida’s economy is sound right? Or is it a disaster to pay people honestly?
2020 Florida Amendment 2 was an amendment to the Constitution of Florida that passed on November 3, 2020, via a statewide referendum concurrent with other elections. The amendment sets to increase the state’s hourly minimum wage to $15 by 2026.
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BJ,
Not disagreeing…we can leave them out and depoliticize here.
Why do we think lunch shouldn’t be $13?
If that’s the price for not eating at home or packing a lunch, then so be it.
If the business model requires poverty for labor suppliers, then maybe it’s not a good business for society.
Maybe we just need fewer of those sorts of businesses. Don’t subsidize them.
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Nonsense. Impressive how little research (first entry in a google search) people are willing to do before they spout nonsense.
Regarding minimum wage vs. EIC plus taxes –
The EIC is the biggest single source of fraud in the tax system - to the tune of multiple Billions per year. Virtually all tax-related identity theft is for the purpose of getting the EIC.
One of the next large sources of the tax gap is businesses. Publicly held businesses are not usually the problem - it’s the middle tier of businesses where most of the tax gap is hiding. Just a couple of owners, revenue from the 10s of millions up to the low billions. Lots of places to hide stuff, and lots of incentive to hide. At that level, the federal tax is in the 30% to 40% range. If you look at it from a cost/benefit standpoint, if you spend $100 to hide $1000 of income, your return on that is really good. (Let’s see, at a 30% tax and actually deducting the $100 cost, you save (1000-100) * 30% or $300. That’s at 300% ROI. And we wonder why the IRS needs more auditors.)
So by expanding the EIC, we provide more opportunity for tax fraud. And by letting business owners pay lower wages because of the expanded EIC, we effectively create opportunities for business that can’t survive without low wage jobs to exist, increasing the opportunities for businesses to fudge a little bit on their taxes.
Or we could just require a higher wage, reducing the number of EIC claims, and eliminating some marginal businesses.
For people who like to see smaller government, that second option seems to be the one consistent with that point of view.
As to folks who simply aren’t capable of being productive enough for that minimum wage, I can see some opportunity for sub-minimum wage work. But the purpose is to allow the individual to work, not to allow a business to exist. Perhaps for teens still in high school. Or for those with various disabilities that limit their opportunities to work. That work would lessen the need for public assistance while giving people the chance for the human dignity that productive work provides.
–Peter
I believe Florida raised it a buck to be $12 in 2023.
For those under the impression that low wages equal low prices:
In the 80s, Radio Shack cut the salesman’s commission rate in November and December. So we were working at a frantic pace, writing sales tickets as fast as we could, stuffing huge amounts of money in the drawer, for no more pay than we made in the slow season. Did RS cut prices for customers to mach the lower pay the salesmen made? Nope. The money taken away from the salesmen by the lower commission rate stayed in Fort Worth.
In 89, RS changed the store manager’s pay scheme. Net result was, depending on the store, a pay cut for the manager of 30-40%. Did RS cut prices to customers? Nope. The money taken away from the managers stayed in Fort Worth.
In 92, RS cut the commission rate for salesmen, for the entire year, cut so low there were very few left who were making better than minimum wage, vs the majority making better than minimum before. Did RS cut prices to customers? Nope. The money taken away from the salesmen stayed in Fort Worth.
Somewhat related: when the Steelcase dealer I worked for went out of business in 2006, the “JC” sold all the customer accounts to another dealer. Did the “JC” pay accrued vacation pay, or severance, to the employees who had worked, for years, to build those accounts and make them more valuable? Nope. He kept all the loot for himself.
Don’t even try to tell me that cutting employee pay will result in price cuts.
Steve
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I don’t think anyone said that. What we did, and do, say is that if total costs go up, prices go up. Restaurants have 3 main costs:
- Rent/equipment/utilities/insurance/licenses (30-40%)
- Food/materials (30-35%)
- Labor (30-35%)
When any of those go up, prices inevitably go up. Sometimes a lower cost producer emerges and then, over time, some of the higher cost producers scale back or shut down due to the tough competition.
(The reason RS cut commissions, wages, jobs, etc is because they were making less and less money. Until they made no money at all and shut the whole thing down.)
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RS made less and less money because their business model was uncompetitive. RS needed 40 points of GP to break even. Best Buy makes a profit at half that. But you couldn’t tell management that. As recounted in the arrogant management thread (wrt Disney), Bernie would thunder “I’ve been in this business 40 years, I know everything”. When Len Roberts was hired as Bernie’s replacement, he said he came in wondering why RS did what it did, but a lunch with Bernie converted him to demanding sky-high GP (regardless of the competition). Their problem was reflected in their pricing, but they never did anything about the pricing. They took money away from their employees, and cheapened the product to pump up GP, but they never did anything to better compete for the customer’s dollar.
Steve
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Sorry back to the original topic.
WOW Hundreds of thousands protesting & striking.
If workers have the determination of the yellow vests they will bring the French economy to a screeching halt!
Nationwide strikes severely disrupted transport, schools and other public services across France.
More than 200 rallies were staged around France on Thursday, including a large one in Paris involving all France’s major unions.
The economic cost of the strikes was not immediately clear. The government worries that a big show of resistance Thursday could encourage unions to continue with protracted walkouts that could hobble the economy just as France is struggling against inflation and trying to boost growth.
The French people have to decide to either endure some destruction of their economy now and change the retirement age, or to endure long-term destruction of their economy by remaining with an absurdly low retirement age. Dithering on this issue is probably not an option, because at some point, French youth may decide to move elsewhere to find work, and only some percentage eventually return.
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Check out the picture of the massive numbers of people out in the streets.