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Author Topic: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good  (Read 95597 times)

forgetful

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #25 on: June 25, 2017, 01:09:29 PM »
i can agree with your comments somewhat-yes there are discrepancies.  it is not a perfect system, but better than anywhere else in the world.  our economic system however, allows for corrections. 

marissa mayer is one good example of what you described.

Curious what you mean by Marissa Mayer being a good example of that.  I knew her, so am curious what you mean.

rocket surgeon

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #26 on: June 25, 2017, 03:01:00 PM »
Curious what you mean by Marissa Mayer being a good example of that.  I knew her, so am curious what you mean.

immediate past ceo of yahoo.  held position from 2012-2017.  depending on which business publication/article you read, she either did very well or very bad for the company.  as you mention the

   "  the corporate elite continuously get massive wages, while they argue that the plebeians will have to make due with salary freezes.  "

  marissa mayer made approx. $900,000 per week or $122.5 mil.  yes, yahoo's stock price did rise 151% during her 4 + years tenure, but much of that was due to ownership of 15% of alibaba and yahoo japan.  take away those 2 entities and yahoo's remaining business dropped $2.4 billion

just saying, she must be one those "corporate elite" you must be referring to, ain'er?  just wondering if you've confronted her on her obscene salary?  i have nothing against her at all, just exhibit 1.  actually, i think it's great that she was able to break that glass ceiling,  lifting that leg really high to urinate with the big dogs
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jesmu84

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #27 on: June 25, 2017, 05:48:45 PM »
immediate past ceo of yahoo.  held position from 2012-2017.  depending on which business publication/article you read, she either did very well or very bad for the company.  as you mention the

   "  the corporate elite continuously get massive wages, while they argue that the plebeians will have to make due with salary freezes.  "

  marissa mayer made approx. $900,000 per week or $122.5 mil.  yes, yahoo's stock price did rise 151% during her 4 + years tenure, but much of that was due to ownership of 15% of alibaba and yahoo japan.  take away those 2 entities and yahoo's remaining business dropped $2.4 billion

just saying, she must be one those "corporate elite" you must be referring to, ain'er?  just wondering if you've confronted her on her obscene salary?  i have nothing against her at all, just exhibit 1.  actually, i think it's great that she was able to break that glass ceiling,  lifting that leg really high to urinate with the big dogs

Why was Marissa Mayer your chosen example?

Tugg Speedman

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #28 on: June 25, 2017, 05:50:03 PM »
immediate past ceo of yahoo.  held position from 2012-2017.  depending on which business publication/article you read, she either did very well or very bad for the company.  as you mention the

   "  the corporate elite continuously get massive wages, while they argue that the plebeians will have to make due with salary freezes.  "

  marissa mayer made approx. $900,000 per week or $122.5 mil.  yes, yahoo's stock price did rise 151% during her 4 + years tenure, but much of that was due to ownership of 15% of alibaba and yahoo japan.  take away those 2 entities and yahoo's remaining business dropped $2.4 billion

just saying, she must be one those "corporate elite" you must be referring to, ain'er?  just wondering if you've confronted her on her obscene salary?  i have nothing against her at all, just exhibit 1.  actually, i think it's great that she was able to break that glass ceiling,  lifting that leg really high to urinate with the big dogs

Before Mayer, Yahoo was a struggling company.   They had three CEOs between 2009 and 20012 before Mayer took over.  (Carol Bartz, Scott Thompson, and Ross Levinsohn)

Mayer was a star at Google and destine to make hundreds of millions if she stayed put.  So she was taking a great reputational risk going to "broken" Yahoo and she was compensated for that risk.  Becuase she cannot now go back to make what she could before Yahoo.  They needed to pay up for the risk she was taking.

Regarding her salary.  There were two possible outcomes,

1. She turned Yahoo around in which case her salary is a rounding error and well worth it.

2. She failed at turning around Yahoo and is was destine to get swallowed up and many would lose their jobs.  In this case, here salary does not matter.

I think what you all fail to recognize is the vital importance of a CEO and the strategic decisions they make.  To put it bluntly, employees can be replaced.  Above jesmu84 was complaining about a hiring freeze for nurses.  For the organization, they don't matter that much.  They will not make or break the company.  Other/new nurses can be found. 

But a CEO can make or break a company.  They matter, and they matter to a health care company more than all the nurses combined.  This is why CEO pay really does not matter.  If they make a good decision, they are the most underpaid employee in a company.  If they make bad decisions, the cost to the organization is many many times their salary and, again, their salary does not matter.

« Last Edit: June 25, 2017, 05:52:07 PM by 1.21 Jigawatts »

rocket surgeon

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #29 on: June 25, 2017, 06:07:37 PM »
Why was Marissa Mayer your chosen example?

because i just saw an article on her and listened to a talk show that used her as a most recent example of ceo pay.  if the talk show would have been on robert welch or jeffrey immelt, i would have used them as an exhibit.  nothing else 
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rocket surgeon

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #30 on: June 25, 2017, 06:10:20 PM »
Before Mayer, Yahoo was a struggling company.   They had three CEOs between 2009 and 20012 before Mayer took over.  (Carol Bartz, Scott Thompson, and Ross Levinsohn)

Mayer was a star at Google and destine to make hundreds of millions if she stayed put.  So she was taking a great reputational risk going to "broken" Yahoo and she was compensated for that risk.  Becuase she cannot now go back to make what she could before Yahoo.  They needed to pay up for the risk she was taking.

Regarding her salary.  There were two possible outcomes,

1. She turned Yahoo around in which case her salary is a rounding error and well worth it.

2. She failed at turning around Yahoo and is was destine to get swallowed up and many would lose their jobs.  In this case, here salary does not matter.

I think what you all fail to recognize is the vital importance of a CEO and the strategic decisions they make.  To put it bluntly, employees can be replaced.  Above jesmu84 was complaining about a hiring freeze for nurses.  For the organization, they don't matter that much.  They will not make or break the company.  Other/new nurses can be found. 

But a CEO can make or break a company.  They matter, and they matter to a health care company more than all the nurses combined.  This is why CEO pay really does not matter.  If they make a good decision, they are the most underpaid employee in a company.  If they make bad decisions, the cost to the organization is many many times their salary and, again, their salary does not matter.

she did go on a little "shopping spree" and instituted the bell curve for employee retention. 

great explanation of how ceo's sail the ship
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MUBurrow

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #31 on: June 25, 2017, 06:16:16 PM »
I think what you all fail to recognize is the vital importance of a CEO and the strategic decisions they make.  To put it bluntly, employees can be replaced.  Above jesmu84 was complaining about a hiring freeze for nurses.  For the organization, they don't matter that much.  They will not make or break the company.  Other/new nurses can be found. 

But a CEO can make or break a company.  They matter, and they matter to a health care company more than all the nurses combined.  This is why CEO pay really does not matter.  If they make a good decision, they are the most underpaid employee in a company.  If they make bad decisions, the cost to the organization is many many times their salary and, again, their salary does not matter.

Its not failing to recognize the impact of a CEO on a company's stock value. Its calling out the mistaken assumption that a rise in the company's stock value bears significant correlation to the number and social mobility of its employees.

The benefits of a rise in that stock value reside in the hands of wealth accumulators who do not pump that money back into the economy to any real degree, except to potentially invest in other similarly situated companies, the fortunes of which, again, do not provide for the social mobility of its employees. And from that dissonance arises a host of other false economic narratives about the relationship between "free markets" and "welfare."

One side note on the health care conversation though - those pointing out the difficulty of rising health care costs on employers are correct. But if we really gave a damn about how to both making it easy for employers to keep people employed, and keeping people healthy and insured, we'd abandon the system of employer-provided insurance in favor of (gasp) exchanges and maybe even an intentionally loss-leading public option.

jesmu84

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #32 on: June 25, 2017, 06:33:28 PM »
Its not failing to recognize the impact of a CEO on a company's stock value. Its calling out the mistaken assumption that a rise in the company's stock value bears significant correlation to the number and social mobility of its employees.

The benefits of a rise in that stock value reside in the hands of wealth accumulators who do not pump that money back into the economy to any real degree, except to potentially invest in other similarly situated companies, the fortunes of which, again, do not provide for the social mobility of its employees. And from that dissonance arises a host of other false economic narratives about the relationship between "free markets" and "welfare."

One side note on the health care conversation though - those pointing out the difficulty of rising health care costs on employers are correct. But if we really gave a damn about how to both making it easy for employers to keep people employed, and keeping people healthy and insured, we'd abandon the system of employer-provided insurance in favor of (gasp) exchanges and maybe even an intentionally loss-leading public option.

I agree with this analysis

forgetful

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #33 on: June 25, 2017, 06:52:03 PM »
Before Mayer, Yahoo was a struggling company.   They had three CEOs between 2009 and 20012 before Mayer took over.  (Carol Bartz, Scott Thompson, and Ross Levinsohn)

Mayer was a star at Google and destine to make hundreds of millions if she stayed put.  So she was taking a great reputational risk going to "broken" Yahoo and she was compensated for that risk.  Becuase she cannot now go back to make what she could before Yahoo.  They needed to pay up for the risk she was taking.

Regarding her salary.  There were two possible outcomes,

1. She turned Yahoo around in which case her salary is a rounding error and well worth it.

2. She failed at turning around Yahoo and is was destine to get swallowed up and many would lose their jobs.  In this case, here salary does not matter.

I think what you all fail to recognize is the vital importance of a CEO and the strategic decisions they make.  To put it bluntly, employees can be replaced.  Above jesmu84 was complaining about a hiring freeze for nurses.  For the organization, they don't matter that much.  They will not make or break the company.  Other/new nurses can be found. 

But a CEO can make or break a company.  They matter, and they matter to a health care company more than all the nurses combined.  This is why CEO pay really does not matter.  If they make a good decision, they are the most underpaid employee in a company.  If they make bad decisions, the cost to the organization is many many times their salary and, again, their salary does not matter.

I strongly disagree with the last two paragraphs.  CEO's are typically the easiest person to replace.  The key to being a good CEO of an established company; don't be an idiot. 

Your paragraphs are the typical reasons that people say the top brass need big salaries and raises, but they do not hold up when one examines their actual job actions and the sheer number of people that could perform just as well.

Since Marissa was brought up; she is nothing special and I'm pretty certain she would agree.  In terms of being able to make good business decisions and make big changes, she is easily replaced.  Her value to Yahoo, was her being perceived of as a "big star," essentially the same general idea of the "hollywood star" that can't actually act, nothing special besides the perception.  Perception drives investors (to raise stock price; but with little actual value outside of investing), yahoo ended more of a disaster than it started. 

rocket surgeon

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #34 on: June 25, 2017, 07:52:20 PM »
  "perception drives investors (to raise stock price; but with little actual value outside of investing), yahoo ended more of a disaster than it started."

maybe initially, but after the honeymoon wears off, the market likes $$$ and potential for more$$$.  the pretty girl at the bar may get a few free drinks, but eventually she's gonna have to produce-ehyn'a?
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Jay Bee

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #35 on: June 25, 2017, 08:13:23 PM »
The upper end, the super high end, couldn't live on slightly less? As an example, a local hospital CEO made $17 mil in the same year they put a hiring freeze and salary increase freeze on nursing staff.

#FakeNews
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Tugg Speedman

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #36 on: June 26, 2017, 06:36:02 AM »
I agree with this analysis

Actually every word was wrong and dangerous.

mu03eng

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #37 on: June 26, 2017, 08:23:10 AM »
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-wage-hike-may-have-gone-too-far/

Timely article. First study out (far from settled science) but seems to indicate Seattle's minimum wage law may have crossed a boundary where the market finds alternatives. Overall, in 2016 with the minimum wage at $13 the minimum wage workers lost $125 a month in salary. Again, may be a blip or the methodology may be off, but it does seem to reinforce the idea that the minimum wage salary band is only elastic to a certain point where it may become inelastic (automation, etc).
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mu03eng

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #38 on: June 26, 2017, 08:31:06 AM »
As far as CEO pay goes, I'm leery of any public decreed salary levels. Logically, I think it makes sense that CEO pay is overblown for their value but once you start controlling salary there, where does it stop? Additionally, the changes we've made in the wake of Enron to make CEO's more responsible is actually hurting the performance of companies because now they have to meet Wall Street standards of performance which is not always a useful standard.

There is a company I know that generates a ton of cash that could be used to reinvest in new technologies and capabilities (2-3 year cycle time from concept to delivery) but have been told in no uncertain terms that that level of reinvestment can't happen because Wall Street would take that as a signal that the companies burn rate is going up and so they will theoretically become less profitable. Right or wrong, how Wall Street is valuing the company(and therefore CEO compensation) is now driving decisions as opposed to what makes the most sense for a company.
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Juan Anderson's Mixtape

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #39 on: June 26, 2017, 09:39:22 AM »
Malcolm Gladwell discusses CEOs in one of his books. Almost certain it's Outliers.

A brief summary: Company structure of employees, management, and operations are more important than the CEO. CEOs of successful companies get hired by struggling companies. The successful company continues to be successful under a new CEO. The struggling company continues to struggle under the hotshot new CEO.

Finding a true CEO star, such as Steve Jobs, is very rare.  But that doesn't stop companies from over valuing the average CEO.  Too much credit or blame is placed at the feet of the CEO.

My opinion: There needs to be a recalibration of value of employees.  Some companies do a better job than others of fairly compensating employees at different levels.  But far too many over value the top employees and under value the lower and mid level employees.

Minimum wage is the wrong thing to be focusing on.  Changing the mentality of employee value is the biggest obstacle in this country. I have no idea how to accomplish that but this is the conversation we should be having.

MU82

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #40 on: June 26, 2017, 10:03:14 AM »
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-wage-hike-may-have-gone-too-far/

Timely article. First study out (far from settled science) but seems to indicate Seattle's minimum wage law may have crossed a boundary where the market finds alternatives. Overall, in 2016 with the minimum wage at $13 the minimum wage workers lost $125 a month in salary. Again, may be a blip or the methodology may be off, but it does seem to reinforce the idea that the minimum wage salary band is only elastic to a certain point where it may become inelastic (automation, etc).

You make sense, as usual. Still, as you say, I'd like to see more time passing before any kind of real conclusion is drawn.
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Eldon

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #41 on: June 26, 2017, 11:09:14 AM »
The article is an opinion piece.  It does not provide extensive analysis of past history, other circumstances or an industry wide average.  Other scientific studies (one by Cal-Berkeley) have came to the exact opposite conclusions examining minimum wage increases. 

The bottom line is that there are two many variables in these situations allowing anyone to argue essentially anything they wish to prove their point. 

Maybe it is best to stick with the humane thing to do and to pay people a living wage for the work they complete.

That's no reason to give up.  There are statistical, econometric ways of controlling for the many confounding variables.

There is a pretty broad consensus that small changes to the minimum wage--especially when eased in gradually--have a very small negative effect on employment, i.e., it leads to people getting fired/not hired.

I think a couple of caveats are worth noting.  First, many studies examine minimum wage changes and calculate an aggregate average across states and time.  This averaging masks the considerable heterogeneity across states, e.g., a minimum wage hike in Mississippi is more likely to have bite than one in Connecticut.  Second, these empirical studies are based on sophisticated regression analyses; but sophisticated or not, all regressions rely on "infinitesimally small" changes in the variable of interest.  Going from a $7.25 minimum wage to a $15 minimum wage is hardly "infinitesimal."

Here is a nice little literature review (what you guys in the natural sciences call "meta analysis") that sums up the recent work on the effects of raising the minimum wage on employment.

http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=empl_research

"[T]he implied employment declines following a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage are very small— between −0.03 and −0.6 percent—and statistically insignificant."

Here is a very recent article on the consensus on the minimum wage findings:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2017/06/17/sorry-advocates-the-minimum-wage-debate-is-not-over/#67614097dd76

The tldr of this Forbes link is that there is no consensus yet on the economic effects of the minimum wage because employment is only ONE of the many effects.  Economists are still tracing out the other, unintended consequences of a minimum wage hike.

jesmu84

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #42 on: June 26, 2017, 11:26:40 AM »
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/seattles-minimum-wage-hike-may-have-gone-too-far/

Timely article. First study out (far from settled science) but seems to indicate Seattle's minimum wage law may have crossed a boundary where the market finds alternatives. Overall, in 2016 with the minimum wage at $13 the minimum wage workers lost $125 a month in salary. Again, may be a blip or the methodology may be off, but it does seem to reinforce the idea that the minimum wage salary band is only elastic to a certain point where it may become inelastic (automation, etc).

Good. Burn the whole system down. Get rid of those types of jobs. Force our country to come up with more stable jobs for people or pivot to a different type of social situation (basic income, for example).

Eldon

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #43 on: June 26, 2017, 11:27:03 AM »
And in true what-a-coincidence form, I get this across my feed

Minimum Wage Increases, Wages, and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle
by Ekaterina Jardim, Mark C. Long, Robert Plotnick, Emma van Inwegen, Jacob Vigdor, Hilary Wething

This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23532.pdf

EDIT: I just saw Eng's 538 link, which links to this study. 
« Last Edit: June 26, 2017, 11:28:38 AM by Eldon »

jesmu84

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #44 on: June 26, 2017, 11:27:15 AM »
Malcolm Gladwell discusses CEOs in one of his books. Almost certain it's Outliers.

A brief summary: Company structure of employees, management, and operations are more important than the CEO. CEOs of successful companies get hired by struggling companies. The successful company continues to be successful under a new CEO. The struggling company continues to struggle under the hotshot new CEO.

Finding a true CEO star, such as Steve Jobs, is very rare.  But that doesn't stop companies from over valuing the average CEO.  Too much credit or blame is placed at the feet of the CEO.

My opinion: There needs to be a recalibration of value of employees.  Some companies do a better job than others of fairly compensating employees at different levels.  But far too many over value the top employees and under value the lower and mid level employees.

Minimum wage is the wrong thing to be focusing on.  Changing the mentality of employee value is the biggest obstacle in this country. I have no idea how to accomplish that but this is the conversation we should be having.

Bingo.

mu03eng

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #45 on: June 26, 2017, 11:35:42 AM »
Good. Burn the whole system down. Get rid of those types of jobs. Force our country to come up with more stable jobs for people or pivot to a different type of social situation (basic income, for example).

Don't disagree, but IMO the issue isn't necessarily a career issue, it's an educational one. We are not configuring out educational system to prepare the future workforce for a different job type.
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jesmu84

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #46 on: June 26, 2017, 11:59:09 AM »
Don't disagree, but IMO the issue isn't necessarily a career issue, it's an educational one. We are not configuring out educational system to prepare the future workforce for a different job type.

Sure. But what do you do for those that are 40, 50, 60 that are not a part of the "future" workforce? Those people are still going to be employed for the next couple decades. Minimum wage jobs are not going to be enough to sustain.

warriorchick

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #47 on: June 26, 2017, 01:03:46 PM »
Sure. But what do you do for those that are 40, 50, 60 that are not a part of the "future" workforce? Those people are still going to be employed for the next couple decades. Minimum wage jobs are not going to be enough to sustain.

How many 40, 50 or 60 year olds make minimum wage?  It's very few. And as a person who used to be the CFO of a company that employed hundreds of workers at or near minimum wage, anyone that old that who was at our bottom was there for one of these reasons: 1. they had cognitive issues of some sort that prevented them from performing more valuable work, 2.had drug or alcohol problems that prevented them from keeping a job for any length of time, or 3.  voluntarily limited their options to a point where a minimum wage job was the only work available (only wanted to work certain hours, or didn't want a job that any real responsibility).  Anyone that showed any hint of leadership or enthusiasm, or even dependability was promoted above minimum wage within a matter of months.  I don't have any reason to believe that isn't the case at most places.
« Last Edit: June 26, 2017, 01:29:59 PM by warriorchick »
Have some patience, FFS.

MUBurrow

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #48 on: June 26, 2017, 01:21:30 PM »
Question for the folks arguing that the minimum wage needn't be connected to the cost of supporting oneself and minor dependents - do you think there should be a minimum wage at all? If you think there should be a minimum wage, but that it need not relate to the cost of living to support folks, what metrics should be used to determine it?

jesmu84

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Re: minimum wage hikes(follow-up)...not so good
« Reply #49 on: June 26, 2017, 01:37:20 PM »
How many 40, 50 or 60 year olds make minimum wage?  It's very few. And as a person who used to be the CEO of a company that employed hundreds of workers at or near minimum wage, anyone that old that who was at our bottom was there for one of these reasons: 1. they had cognitive issues of some sort that prevented them from performing more valuable work, 2.had drug or alcohol problems that prevented them from keeping a job for any length of time, or 3.  voluntarily limited their options to a point where a minimum wage job was the only work available (only wanted to work certain hours, or didn't want a job that any real responsibility).  Anyone that showed any hint of leadership or enthusiasm, or even dependability was promoted above minimum wage within a matter of months.  I don't have any reason to believe that isn't the case at most places.

I misspoke in my previous report. I shouldn't have said minimum wage. I'm more referring to the low pay of mid- or low-tier workers. Especially when relative to others in the work force. Again, in my field, looking at techs/hospital support staff vs nurses/clinical staff vs hospital administrators. It's insane.