# Minimum wage increase



## Chris

The day before yesterday it was passed that minimum wage will be going from 9.25 and hour to 15 an hour here in California. 

It all sounds good that some will be able to make more money and live the american dream. The part they forget to see is that most all small business can not afford this and big business just won't pay it. Yesterday Heinz announced they are shutting down their plant and moving out of state because of this. Right there is several hundred jobs gone. A small business will cut down on staff to absorb the hit. I will be getting rid of two of my office girls and keep just one. Besides that everything will get more expensive. Housing will go up, gas will go up, food will go up. I honestly don't understand how this is going to help anything?


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## havasu

We need to get rid of Governor Moonbeam and all his enabling staff. They are absolutely killing the American Dream, unless your dream is to sit back and drink Colt 45's, get free Section 8 housing, be supplied with all your food from the WIC and EBT programs, and oh yeah, them free Obammy phones and Internet.


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## Chris

havasu said:


> We need to get rid of Governor Moonbeam and all his enabling staff. They are absolutely killing the American Dream, unless your dream is to sit back and drink Colt 45's, get free Section 8 housing, be supplied with all your food from the WIC and EBT programs, and oh yeah, them free Obammy phones and Internet.



That is truly the California dream of most. I know several people that actually look forward to that. Those and the ones that want to sit around and smoke pot because they have a medical card. I find it hard to believe you are in your early 20's and need medical cannabis. 

I am very very sad for the youth of today. Most seem to be very entitled and are just lazy. Very few of them actually want to learn a trade and work for a living. Then we have the people in charge enabling this attitude with politics. It is more important to get that vote and put money in their pockets than it is to show the true american dream.


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## nealtw

Chris said:


> The day before yesterday it was passed that minimum wage will be going from 9.25 and hour to 15 an hour here in California.
> 
> It all sounds good that some will be able to make more money and live the american dream. The part they forget to see is that most all small business can not afford this and big business just won't pay it. Yesterday Heinz announced they are shutting down their plant and moving out of state because of this. Right there is several hundred jobs gone. A small business will cut down on staff to absorb the hit. I will be getting rid of two of my office girls and keep just one. Besides that everything will get more expensive. Housing will go up, gas will go up, food will go up. I honestly don't understand how this is going to help anything?



It is an adjustment period but it will work out in the end because it always does.
It is hard on companies that pay even well above min.wage as they havew to raise wages too just to keep good people. But the record shoes that the cities that have already raised wages have increased the jobs, not lost them.
Heinz is under new management and is closing plants all over North Amareca and it not about water or wages. If it was they would have kept their plant in Ontario Canada.:beer:


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## frodo

nealtw said:


> It is an adjustment period but it will work out in the end because it always does.
> It is hard on companies that pay even well above min.wage as they havew to raise wages too just to keep good people. But the record shoes that the cities that have already raised wages have increased the jobs, not lost them.
> Heinz is under new management and is closing plants all over North Amareca and it not about water or wages. If it was they would have kept their plant in Ontario Canada.:beer:





This difficult decision was the result of a comprehensive evaluation to maximize efficiencies, reduce excess capacity and to help make Heinz more competitive in a challenging global business environment, Mullen said in an emailed statement to the Business Journal.

that double speak  my friend =   wages  and tax's


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## nealtw

frodo said:


> This difficult decision was the result of a comprehensive evaluation to maximize efficiencies, reduce excess capacity and to help make Heinz more competitive in a challenging global business environment, Mullen said in an emailed statement to the Business Journal.
> 
> that double speak  my friend =   wages  and tax's



Sure it is ,but it has nothing to do with Cal., min wage. It is simply union busting.
I doubt if they had any empoyees that would have been effected by the higher wage.


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## buffalo

There's talk about it here also. I'm not sure , I believe it's NYS , but maybe it's on the federal level.

Here's my honest to god view on this. It's just like the post I made about the government printing off money out of thin air and creating inflation......hidden tax. 

This is no different. If minimum wage goes up , so does the price of everything else. The cost of living is higher and your dollar that you make is worth less. Hidden tax.


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## nealtw

buffalo said:


> There's talk about it here also. I'm not sure , I believe it's NYS , but maybe it's on the federal level.
> 
> Here's my honest to god view on this. It's just like the post I made about the government printing off money out of thin air and creating inflation......hidden tax.
> 
> This is no different. If minimum wage goes up , so does the price of everything else. The cost of living is higher and your dollar that you make is worth less. Hidden tax.



That is true but capitalism dosn't work without inflation, if wages don't inflate at the rate of the greater economy you have a greater and greater number of poor.


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## buffalo

nealtw said:


> That is true but capitalism dosn't work without inflation, if wages don't inflate at the rate of the greater economy you have a greater and greater number of poor.



Inflation wouldn't happen , if they dint print money.  If the dollar was backed by a specific weight/amount of say gold , then it's worth is established. Now it's worth is in Flux , a downward flux because more money is being printed. Capitalism can work without that . 

By raising the minimum wage , they are creating a greater number of poor. Because now you , who has a trade and a skill that not just anybody can do without years 9f experience and training , make less and are poorer. Besides , McDonald's should not be your full time job to support a family. If the government sees it that way then we might as well be socialists,  which we are half way there anyway.


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## nealtw

buffalo said:


> Inflation wouldn't happen , if they dint print money.  If the dollar was backed by a specific weight/amount of say gold , then it's worth is established. Now it's worth is in Flux , a downward flux because more money is being printed. Capitalism can work without that .
> 
> By raising the minimum wage , they are creating a greater number of poor. Because now you , who has a trade and a skill that not just anybody can do without years 9f experience and training , make less and are poorer. Besides , McDonald's should not be your full time job to support a family. If the government sees it that way then we might as well be socialists,  which we are half way there anyway.



No that is not how it works.  More people moving into middle class with more money to spend. Trades people have more work than they can handle and raise their rates and higher more people.


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## buffalo

nealtw said:


> No that is not how it works.  More people moving into middle class with more money to spend. Trades people have more work than they can handle and raise their rates and higher more people.



Not more money to spend , because everything else now costs more. Including the rates your now charging.


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## nealtw

buffalo said:


> Not more money to spend , because everything else now costs more. Including the rates your now charging.



But if you can get all those people off food stamps, they will have to find somewhere else to spend you tax dollars:hide: like infrastructure.


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## buffalo

I agree. And nys is the capital of welfare.


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## nealtw

No, farm subsidies, check you elected people for who owns farms and how much money they get, and food stamps subsidies big business who pay min. wage.


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## buffalo

nealtw said:


> No, farm subsidies, check you elected people for who owns farms and how much money they get, and food stamps subsidies big business who pay min. wage.



I would have to look into that , because I don't know. But I feel better about giving money to the poor farmers who work sun up till sun down providing our country with food , than the baby mommas who get more money for each kid they spit out. 

We could seriously live just as good as I am now if we quite working. Free rent , free food , free health insurance . maybe even an Obama phone . I just couldn't do it. I guess a saftey net for people to fall on is a great idea for any society. But it's just blantently being taken advantage of here. And tbh , I don't think that's somthing you can change , there will always be those people.


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## nealtw

I have no problem with poor farmers, and those are not the ones I was talking about.
http://farm.ewg.org/top_recips.php?fips=00000&progcode=totalfarm&page=1&yr=2012


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## nealtw

http://politix.topix.com/news/10139...f-dollars-from-the-farm-bill-they-just-passed


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## buffalo

That right there just shows the coruption of government.  Even ownership aside , it's all about lobbyists.  You have a group that can donate a bunch of cash to a campaign fund , your gonna get what you want , wether justified or not , wether for the good of the people or not.


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## nealtw

I watch your news for entertainment because if I watch ours I would be buying new TVs weekly.


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## bud16415

The money supply has to grow and reflect the true growth in a country. Something has to be created of worth before the money supply can grow. It would be no different than barter for goods and services money is just a convenient way to barter. Say a guy has a piece of rocky ground and he spends ten years picking up stones and builds a beautiful house out of them. He has taken nothing and made something of worth. Another guy spent ten years clearing and making a beautiful farm out of worthless land and a third guy spent ten years building a factory to make cars out iron oar. They need a method to buy each others created products with the wealth they created thru their hard work. That is free market capitalism and a dirty word now a day. Others like governor moonbeam are Keynesian thinkers and don&#8217;t apply measurements or data to their evaluation of a country&#8217;s worth and use the money policy as a short term fix to all problems. And yes inflation is a hidden tax we all pay. 

If you want to learn more read everything you can get your hands on about Milton Friedman and all he had written on the subject. 

Here is a good starting point or just google his name.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/milton-friedman.asp


[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A[/ame]


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## slownsteady

We've been down this road before in discussions here. 
Our economy (in all it's parts) is based on an industrial model that doesn't exist in America anymore. Politicians and thinkers (not to be confused with each other) are struggling to figure out how to grow an economy where human labor isn't valued ( can you spell "automation"?  How about "robot"?). I'm afraid the old rules may not apply anymore.


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## bud16415

We have been down the road a few times and don&#8217;t let your vision be blurred by your perception of reality. We have always embraced automation this country invented it in fact. Automation including robots made more jobs than it ever replaced. What it did was allow the cost of a product to come down within the grasp of the average man. Automobiles stopped being hand crafted 100 years ago and without automation we would still be riding around with horses and carts. There has to be something created out of nothing for there to be growth and prosperity. 

I work for a company that employs 300,000 people in 170 countries and was based in manufacturing and still is.  The plant I work in employs about 5000 people and the trickle down effect into the rest of the community is enormous. We have all kinds of automation and robots and the whole deal keeps this town from going down the drain at least a 50 mile radius of ground zero would feel the impact if and when they leave. 90% of those 5000 people are welding or stamping steel screwing pipes together and wiring devices. They are making very high wages and have excellent benefits all as a result of the business being located here. The company respects the workers and the workers are glad to have the jobs. 40 years ago when I started there were 16,000 employs at this location. The demand for product hasn&#8217;t lessened over that time at all in fact we now supply 3 times what we did then. What happened was the rest of the world caught on and rules and regulations some good some not so good and taxes, forced outsourcing and alternate methods to supply the demands while keeping prices down. I cant ever remember one job going away because a robot took it or some automation when the plant was in a growing mode. In fact when we would send work to Asia or Mexico they declined taking the automation in favor of super old time methods as they wanted to make more jobs as ill thought out as that was at the time. 

We just opened a new mirror of the one I work at, plant in Texas. The main reason being the business friendly climate in that state combined with a non union work force that is hungry for the American dream. I don&#8217;t blame any company for doing what it has to do to stay completive if not then all jobs are lost. 

There is a notion that companies left to their own will ruin the world and kill the workers and produce the worst products. I have never seen that. When there is competition just the reverse happens. There is a place for government regulations and I don&#8217;t know one company that has much of an issue with the ones that protect the environment in today&#8217;s world and yes I can site lots of things in the past that contradict that, but those I don&#8217;t see as the norm and business today deplores that history as much as anyone does. What the government is lousy at is picking winners and losers and funding the way they think the markets should go rather than the consumers. 

Human labor will always be of value. What really devalues human labor is when you can get a monetary reward equal to labor for doing nothing. 

I suggested reading up or watching clips of Milton Friedman I would also recommend reading up on W. Edwards Deming and his message to the industrial world. 

Here is an interesting exchange between Michael Moore and Milton Friedman. Michael was about 150 pounds lighter then. 

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xJJhZjKBjo[/ame]


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## nealtw

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fire-kills-145-at-triangle-shirtwaist-factory
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/world/asia/bangladeshi-factory-owners-charged-in-fatal-fire.html
If any one thinks these people were working for the american dream, good luck


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## slownsteady

> We have been down the road a few times and don&#8217;t let your vision be blurred by your perception of reality.



That, my friend, is a two-way street.


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## bud16415

slownsteady said:


> That, my friend, is a two-way street.


 

I cant agree more. I constantly evaluate my perception of reality and I quite often modify it and sometimes change it. I rarely try and change others perception of a particular reality because it is one of the most difficult of tasks when their view and mine are diametrical opposite. I rather support free thinking and hope that people think about actual facts they know to be true and then formulate their own personal reality based around facts. Today too many of us really on someone to gather and digest facts and present facts to us as consumption with their realty mixed in. sometimes the presenters reality is really theirs and sometime it is slanted for a reason with an agenda. We know this from the history we were taught in school. Like how we sat down with the Indians on the first thanksgiving and all ate turkey and pumpkin pie together and had a grand old party together. The history of industrialization of this country is also sugar coated and feed to us that same way and some might dirty secrets are forgotten. That breaking into an industrial society and its dirty secrets is now going on in other places in the world right now. There is a bad side to almost everything that happens that changes mankind. And we have to view the good along with the bad and hopefully more good comes from it than bad. Take China emerging at a rate far faster than we did as they have the benefits of copying rather than inventing technologies. You had billions of people living in squalor with all the nasty health related issues of such. Now come industrialization and many are lifted to a better quality of life but some suffer from new problems caused by the new lifestyle. Some peoples reality only see the problems industrialization causes and not the benefits it creates. 

Take Neals  job for instance. He is one of the last of real jobs left. He builds homes with his bare hands. If it wasnt for guys like him and our economic systems we have in place our shelters would all have to be of our own doing. Could you imagine what people would be living in if it wasnt for our system and guys working for guys that are in the business of constructing so much more from the ground up than we could ever do by ourselves. 

Thats the top level story to a home now lets look below the surface. A home starts with excavation done with a machine built in a factory on an assembly line with robots and many workers. We could dig all this by hand and have many more jobs and use shovels made by a shovel smith hammered out by hand. We then pour the concrete made in a factory highly automated with workers pushing buttons put in a truck made in a factory driven across roads maintained with automated equipment and poured in the forms and smoothed off by workers. If we use blocks those come from an automated factory also. Then we get to framing the sheet material is made in a highly automated plywood/ OSB plant with lots of workers the lumber is harvested with automation and is processed by automation into 2x4s and every other size and shape you can think of all in a factory. Wire, plumbing, drywall, doors, windows, insulation, plaster, paint, toilets, sinks, baths, carpets, flooring, fixtures, hardware, nails, screws, even the trusses are assembled off site in a factory, roofing, driveway even the plantings come from automation, even the sod in the yard come from an automated sod farm. The owner of the home building company proudly says I built that house over there and he never touched a piece of material. The actual carpenter says he didnt build that house I did he just made 10 times as much money for sitting on his *** because he owns the company I really built it. When in actuality it was some guy working for my company that built an automated system that made all that material in mass quantities and all the tech people that keep that machinery running played a big part in the big picture. 

The family moving into that beautiful house is able to have such a beautiful big place as opposed to a tiny rough sawn primitive home because of automation and robots. 

Thats just building but every aspect of our lives is made better because of free enterprise and automation and the guy at the top getting rich for doing it. 

A rising tide lifts all ships. Yes times are changing and yes the people in government for the most part have no clue what they are doing and have no business pretending they do understand. Things in my perception work better when they get out of the way.   

The best part of the world we live in is that we can disagree on some issues and still be friends.


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## slownsteady

I like your response, and not just because of the last line. If a discussion like this couldn't remain friendly, there would be no use in having it.

My original point was not to curse technology ( automation, robots, etc.) I understand that it has made life easier for all of us and has kept prices down for the most part. The side effect is a surplus of unskilled laborers, which most economists write off as a casual number on a spreadsheet, and dismiss. Unfortunately, those people have nowhere to go, and can't be erased. So what do they do?

A rising tide lifts all ships is a nice metaphor, but a ship with holes in the hull just stays at the bottom.


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## bud16415

Times change and technology moves ahead I could actually make an analogy just the opposite from my firsthand experience in industry. Having been at this game for 42 years now there was a point about 30 years ago I felt I was at the top of my game. I totally understood the most complex of industrial controls and also the hardware to go along with that. My knowledge of machine tools and machining were also state of the art and people still designed things on a drawing board with paper and pencil and some of the old timers still used a slip stick for cyphering. (What could be better than that we put a man on the moon that way.) That last line will separate the men from the boys if you understood it. I was at the pinnacle of my chosen profession. The young kids were going to have to learn from me if they wanted to grow and advance. All of a sudden everything I knew was buggy whip manufacturing do to the advent of computers. Sure I could turn knobs and make anything but the rest of the world wasn&#8217;t turning knobs they were tapping keys. The young guys that didn&#8217;t know a thing about anything sure knew how to embrace computer technology though. I was quickly falling into the unskilled labor pool and into the deep end because I was expected to be in the lead not following. 50% of what I knew didn&#8217;t change and the other 50% was changing as fast as I was learning it new. You have to reinvent yourself or you will be left behind. 

The unskilled laborers are not being left behind by the world moving ahead they are being left behind because they are not reinventing themselves. All advancements have ever done was increase opportunities and made more jobs not less. It&#8217;s up to the person to figure out where they fit in and do something about getting the skills to get in the game. 

First hand I have friends that just got out of dairy farming. They are not rich people but they had a nice operation and worked 365 days a year. The main reason they went out of dairy was there are no kids or unemployed people or anyone that wants to do hard work for minimum wage. Occasionally they would hire someone who&#8217;s benefits had run out and was up against the wall. They would push back at first but over time they started actually liking the idea they had something to do and were feeling accomplishment. Then all of a sudden they would quit and most of the time it was because they figured out some new scam where there was money for nothing again. They didn&#8217;t fall thru the cracks because min wage should have been higher. 

I saw a show on TV last year where a young guy set out to find 50 jobs in 50 weeks in 50 states with very little skills except being a nice guy and needing work. I think he was writing a book or something also. He went from state to state and some of them he felt the job was so good he wished he could keep it.  

  You are right a ship with holes in the hull is never going to leave the bottom. And every time we hand someone a lifejacket and tell them here is your sea ration get off the boat it&#8217;s sinking rather than get over there and plug up some of those holes in the hull we will feed you when everyone else eats, the ships will continue to sink.


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## nealtw

I still use my slide rule.
Bud , I don't think anybody will argue the things change in time and the worker has to keep up. Even the miloker has to be able to read the hot tag and dump the milk from that cow.
But come on, radios and what have you were made in the US for years, people just stud in one place and soldered this peice to that lump, do you think the people in asia have to learn a whole lot more to make phones.
You will be hard pressed to find any improvements in how to stitch a shirt or a pair of jeans.
Give us your week and poor and we can use them.
No wait we can make more money if you keep your week and poor, we can use them where they are.


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## bud16415

nealtw said:


> I still use my slide rule.


 

It doesnt count to use your slide rule as a shoe horn.


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## nealtw

Like this.........


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## slownsteady

you're right..that'll never work for shoes.


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## bud16415

I used to have that very same circular slide rule, I wonder what ever happened to it. I bet it&#8217;s in the back of a desk drawer here some place. 

As to the min wage milker never dumping hot milk into the bulk tank when the cow was tagged. We had one guy I nicknamed &#8220;Lumpy&#8221; that did it twice in one week. The first time he had a list of ear tag numbers of who was treated and the treated cows had bright red vet wrap on each hind leg about 6 inches wide and he was told 50 times when you milk a treated cow pull off the hose from the pipeline and attach it to the bucket. Milk the cow and then flush everything out with water and reattach the hose. So he milks one into the tank right at the end of milking and guess what open the valve and dump 10,000 lbs of milk in the manure pit. Few days later he has numbers, he has red tape and now he has cows that are spray painted red that you couldn&#8217;t miss from 100 yards away. Same thing another 10,000 lbs down the drain. Lumpy got fired after that and is now a certified KIA mechanic at the local dealership changing oil. I bought my filters and left. 

Getting back on topic I never said there wasn&#8217;t a great out sourcing of work out of the country and there wasn&#8217;t a great deal of workers out of work in the country. What I said is automation and robots are not responsible for job loss (net) or work being taken to other countries. 
Neutron Jack Welch mantra was &#8220;Automate, Immigrate or Evaporate&#8221;. 

Companies are not automating to get rid of jobs they are doing it to increase productivity. When that happens sales go up and companies expand and hire more people. Automation is a way to keep work from being outsourced to countries that pay nothing.

The way I apply logic is to look at a problem in reverse. Take Neal for example where he lives I&#8217;m sure they could use more jobs. Let&#8217;s look at his well automated profession and view it in reverse. Let&#8217;s de-automate all the products he uses and employ more people. We could start simple and take away his job killing power saw and nail gun for starter. That would employ at least 4x Neal. Get rid of the excavation equipment and we will save on pollution and make more jobs. One Neal in an excavator or 30x Neal with shovels. Keep in mind my calculations are based around building a home in the same amount of time we do today. I could go on about the job site but the true automation happens up stream of Neal he doesn&#8217;t see. Instead of getting a load of plywood and 2x4s lets deliver some logs to the site and saw them with a pit saw like the 150 year old homes here are made with. To get enough lumber and decking I would say you would need another 50x Neal. In short order at min wage labor we would have his town fully employed but the cost of the home would be out of reach of anyone working so we wouldn&#8217;t have a buyer and no buyer no jobs. 

Take that analogy times a million and you have an economy.


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## Chris

Not to change the subject to much but around here I see more people that I call the "unemployable". I myself and the construction company in the building next to me talk about it all the time. He will have an ad out to hire some guys. He has a huge sign on his building and a large logo on his door. These potential employees continuously come to my building and talk to my receptionist, I too have a large sign on my door. They are applying at a company called Apex and my company is CW Development. These people bring in his application to my office and ask for an interview. I will go out there and ask them where they are applying and most have no clue and many say they picked up the application from here even though the app has his company name on it. This has happened at least 20-30 times in the last year or two. For me if you don't even have any clue where you are applying you shouldn't be looking for a job.

Besides that we get guys the are stoned off their asses coming to an interview with their medical card for pot. 
We get guys showing up in sandals and shorts to apply for work.
We get guys that can only work certain days and certain hours.
I get applicants that are in their mid 20's with no DL and want to be picked up from their homes everyday.
Most all have little to no experience asking for 20+ per hour because they need it or because it is hard work.

Sad thing is that this is the majority of applicants, I would say about 98% of what we get. Am I supposed to bend over backward to employ these people to be fair and let it hurt the company?

If I do end up hiring anyone, most will quit within a day or two because of the long hours and hard work. I have probably gone through 30 guys in the last year or two, it's getting expensive to keep training people to quit. 

I am not sure if California is different than other places but it is almost impossible to find a hard working sober person that is willing to work for a fair wage.


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## bud16415

We hire here all the time and I have told so many people looking for work to get on the list. They say no I could never work there etc. It never dawned on me till I was telling someone about no one wanting a job and they said oh he wouldn&#8217;t have passed a drug test and knows that. Then the light came on. 

On a lighter note:

Talk about a mix up applying for work. My friend built a little 4 unit shopping plaza on the main drag and in one end he has his auto repair business and his office is at the end with his company name on the door. The other units are retail shops etc. Behind the plaza was an old bar that was sold and turned into a strip club and at least once a week some girl walks in to interview for a job dancing. 

I will leave the rest of the story up to the imagination.   But I will say he never complains about them coming to the wrong place.


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## nealtw

bud16415 said:


> I
> 
> Take Neal for example where he lives Im sure they could use more jobs. Lets look at his well automated profession and view it in reverse. Lets de-automate all the products he uses and employ more people. We could start simple and take away his job killing power saw and nail gun for starter. That would employ at least 4x Neal. Get rid of the excavation equipment and we will save on pollution and make more jobs. One Neal in an excavator or 30x Neal with shovels. Keep in mind my calculations are based around building a home in the same amount of time we do today. I could go on about the job site but the true automation happens up stream of Neal he doesnt see. Instead of getting a load of plywood and 2x4s lets deliver some logs to the site and saw them with a pit saw like the 150 year old homes here are made with. To get enough lumber and decking I would say you would need another 50x Neal. In short order at min wage labor we would have his town fully employed but the cost of the home would be out of reach of anyone working so we wouldnt have a buyer and no buyer no jobs.
> 
> Take that analogy times a million and you have an economy.



There is problem with using me as an example.

This is the way it works, I compete for my work.
I no longer have the two guys on site to move lumber from the street and help with heavy lifting, but the builders would still get the dump load when your not looking and guess who moves the lumber. If I don't have all the latest tools to make the job move along I just don't make any money. All that really happens is I make the same money for building 12 houses a year as I did building 4 houses a year with 2 less jobs. Houses didn't get cheaper. And now that most of the tools are being made offshore and poor quality.
There are winners but the winners aren't the workers or the small business owners.
As a small business owner I judge success both by my success and the success of my empoyees. It is important that they can feed their families and have a good life. Min wage is a last grasp for air for a diying business and when supper successfull businesses use it they should be ashamed of them selves.


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## Chris

I pay minimum wage for my front office girl and parts runner. If it cost me any more I would have to get rid of them and have the other guys do those jobs. There is not enough money in the company to keep them around if it cost more. They are not really needed positions and are really only there to keep a couple people employed. With minimum wage going up they will likely be laid off or costs will have to go up.


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## nealtw

Chris said:


> I pay minimum wage for my front office girl and parts runner. If it cost me any more I would have to get rid of them and have the other guys do those jobs. There is not enough money in the company to keep them around if it cost more. They are not really needed positions and are really only there to keep a couple people employed. With minimum wage going up they will likely be laid off or costs will have to go up.



Oh boy, I understand the pain and even worse is the emplyee that you have valued and givin a little raise and then all of a sudden they are back to min. when the min. goes up.
Things do come up that puts pressure on small business people and the last thing we or most of us want to do manage the business, we just like it when things hum along as usuall but some time we have to make tough decissions.
Cutting people usually means a more expensive person is doing that cheaper work or we find ourselves doing longer ours.
It will take time for your prices will raise to bring things back to normal.

That dosn't mean there isn't a need for the change. Depending on your empoyees story they could be on food stamps, that is wefare and gov. subsidy for your business and allows you to keep the prices low enough to stay in business. Since your not getting rich I suggest that when you work for really big companies, they are the welfare queens the benifit from your low prices.


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## Chris

Luckily both my low paid employees are young and using this as a stepping stone while they attend school. They live with their parents or have roommates. They live just fine. My front office girl tells me all the time it's not a big deal if I need to cut her as she has saved her money and is in school full time.


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## buffalo

There's always going to be entry level positions where you learn and then advance. My problem is paying McDonald's employees 15$ an hour because they "need " it. No , you need to get into a profession where you can advance through hard work.


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## Chris

buffalo said:


> There's always going to be entry level positions where you learn and then advance. My problem is paying McDonald's employees 15$ an hour because they "need " it. No , you need to get into a profession where you can advance through hard work.



That is the number one reason I am against it.


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## nealtw

buffalo said:


> There's always going to be entry level positions where you learn and then advance. My problem is paying McDonald's employees 15$ an hour because they "need " it. No , you need to get into a profession where you can advance through hard work.



Companies like Chris has would like to hire a qualifide emplyee and pay X and send him out on a job and charge a little more than 2X. With the hope that with a few emplyees there would be enough to pay his wages and the fixed cost of shop, equipment and support staff. And if he is lucky make a little too. He will tell us that is minimal at best.

If you total Macdonalds expences for food servers world wide, they pay out about 8 billion, after that and all other expences their profit is 8 billion. If they were a responsible employers there would be no need for raising the min wage.
AND if all the low paid people got an education to better their situation, you will have to many qualified people, lowering the value of those jobs and a whole new group of people would be lined up at Macdonalds.
But now they have a massive dept for the eucation they got.


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## buffalo

I agree , the world is over populated.


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## nealtw

When Chris has trouble keeping the good employees and get tired of teaching new ones, he will be forced to pay more, that is the way it should work.
Up here when companies like Macdonalds go thru to many employees they convinced the Gov. that no Canadians would take the job and were allowed to bring in foriegn workers who were then treated like slaves and those workers were afraid to complain and if they quit they have to go home, that has just been addressed.

Everybody feels the pain of the small mom and pop outfit that is struggling but the politician talking about how this will hurt small business, they aren't talking about Chris. They are talking about those small businesses that try to buy elections.


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## slownsteady

buffalo said:


> I agree , the world is over populated.



Like Neutron jack said;......."evaporate"


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## Chris

Didn't hitler try that?


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## nealtw

Earth is like a living creature, when it gets a virus it will get a fever in order to kill the infection.


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## frodo

I actually had a laborer,  not an apprentice,  a laborer,  tell me I needed to pay him journeymans wages because he has kids

I told him it is not my business or responsibility to feed his kids,  thats his responsibility

that if he wants me to pay him more he needs to have  more knowledge and license

he said it was not fair that the plumber was not married.and was making more than him

never did figure out where he is getting that concept from


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## frodo

slownsteady said:


> Like Neutron jack said;......."evaporate"



soylent green


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## bud16415

The real question then is when does a company or an employer become too greedy?
 Following the logic of some a small company is in a tough spot when like Chris for example has a couple entry level people he&#8217;s paying min wage to bring them on board and to make it run smoother rather than pulling his skilled people to do the mundane task of running for parts or answering the phone. He knows his breaking point where he would rather take back on the mundane work rather than pay more than he can afford. But a large company like McDonalds is just large in scale because it employs say 5000 times as many people and has 5000 times the capital outlay and makes 5000 times the profits and is beholding to the shareholders a profit each of the franchise owners basically is running a small operation and wants to show a profit and they have a set price point target for their product the public is ready to pay, and they say they will have to take measures to eliminate people if forced to pay more. I know of a lot of fast food chains that went out of business so in their cases something made them nonprofit. 

I don&#8217;t think Chris held a gun to the head of his min wage workers to get them to take the job. It&#8217;s his company he should be able to hire who he wants and pay them what he thinks they are worth and give them a raise when they deserve it or fear losing them to someone else. Free enterprise is not just about the owners it&#8217;s also about the workers. They have the freedom to ask for more money at any time. They have the freedom to go someplace else where their skills will be recognized if they think they are not being treated fair. And they also can go start a competing company and be the boss if they want. 

IMO an economy should be allowed to float and seek it&#8217;s own levels that&#8217;s when it&#8217;s working. The old adage is How much is something worth? Answer : Whatever the customer will bear.


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## nealtw

IMO an economy should be allowed to float and seek it&#8217;s own levels that&#8217;s when it&#8217;s working. The old adage is How much is something worth? Answer : Whatever the customer will bear.
Supply and demand?


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## frodo

thats what my Dad used to say..it is worth whatever some damn fool will pay for it


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## bud16415

Of course Supply and Demand. No one can say McDonalds doesnt have ample competition. No one can show how all these fast food places are all owned by the same guy or how they all go about a secret agenda of price fixing. There is abundant supply and some fixed amount of demand. You cant build 100 McDonalds in some little town and expect them all to turn record profits so the supply has to fit the demand. 

Now diamonds are quite a different story. They for the most part come from one place and are controlled by one family and they trickle out the supply to keep demand hi and prices high. Scientists figured out how to make diamonds and the ones they make are now much better than the ones they mine. By all accounts diamond prices should be low, except for marketing that has convinced people they are just not real. Very much the same thing they are now making claims about organic foods and charging twice the price. There is supply and demand and there is what someone will pay.


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## nealtw

Henry Ford not only built alot of cars but he recognized the people had to earn enough to buy them and paid the employees more. He also didn't need fully qualied tradesman to work the line.


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## bud16415

Henry Ford epitomized what capitalism is all about. He figured out a better way to do something and became enormously rich in the process. He didn&#8217;t pay the employees more out of the goodness of his heart or to spread the wealth around. He paid them more to get and keep the best. He wanted a quality work force that could be pushed and asked to do more and more and make his assembly lines run faster and still put out a quality product. If everyone on his line was getting the same pay and benefits they would get at a goof off job of the day he would have had huge turnovers of employees. Instead he had loyalty from his workers asked to do a hard day&#8217;s work and getting top compensation for it. When a new employee was hired someone vouched for someone to be hired. Like that&#8217;s Tony&#8217;s kid and he will be a good worker and keep his nose clean or Tony will straighten him out. Companies were generational and were an extended family. Pay someone a little more and they will be quick to take up your mission and make it theirs. 

The apprenticeship I went thru as a young man was modeled after the Henry Ford Trade school. Even some of the books we used were written for that school. That was in the day you didn&#8217;t look for someone that could do a job for you, you actually grew that person from the ground up. Now you have the factor someone owes a company for their education and that same company employed them using what they learned and is paying them wages and benefits enough they don&#8217;t feel they are employed they feel they are part of the company. 

As great as all that is Henry didn&#8217;t do any of it out of the goodness of his heart, he did it to make his product better and cheaper and put more money in his own bank account. Sure he was doing good for people in the process. The other interesting point is he did it without the government telling him he had to.


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## nealtw

So you think the gov. should stay out of business and not interfere with supply and demand or simple regulations?


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## bud16415

No I think they need some regulations and they don&#8217;t need to always be playing one group against another. I don&#8217;t know about Canada but our constitution points out pretty clearly what government should do and shouldn&#8217;t do. It works best IMO when they do less than more. They shouldn&#8217;t be buying milk and dumping it out in order to keep demand and then controlling the price to the point you can&#8217;t pay for the feed to make the milk let alone the fuel. Let the free market adjust and the chips fall where they may. 


 We have one privately owned farmers market / grocery store in town. An old lady owned it and the prices are the lowest around and the quality some of the best in their product they sell. She paid her workers 2 to 3 times any chain grocery store in town and benefits. The only stipulation there was is you come to work. You punch your card and you bust your butt until you punch out. Nothing was computerized and no scanning bar codes old fashion cash registers with rows of keys. There was an absolute zero tolerance policy for not moving and she would fire you in a heartbeat. She ran this big store with about one tenth of the employees any chain store would have and she had people lined up to get in the front door to shop and the back door wanting a job. There are a lot of long time workers there people have been there 30 years or more and about a 1000 that worked there one day. If the government got involved in telling her who she had to hire or she couldn&#8217;t ask them to work 60 hours a week during the busy season, her business model would fall apart. When no one is complaining and no one is being hurt. I believe one person&#8217;s rights end when they infringe on the rights of the next person.


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## nealtw

In Canada farm workers work under a different set of rules and I don't know emough about it to comment on that. BUT our farmers do have a quota system I could talk for hours about that.

So you wouldn't be upset if people were coming from all over the world with your education and experience to compete for your job. and if one took your job because she will work twice the hours for half the pay and she is better looking?


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## frodo

nealtw said:


> In Canada farm workers work under a different set of rules and I don't know emough about it to comment on that. BUT our farmers do have a quota system I could talk for hours about that.
> 
> So you wouldn't be upset if people were coming from all over the world with your education and experience to compete for your job. and if one took your job because she will work twice the hours for half the pay and she is better looking?



if you wish to come here, LEGALLY and work I have no problem competing with you.  

then it is mano e mano  may the best man win.

but,  if you are illegal, willing to work slave wages and slave hours

I just as soon turn you in or kick your butt back over the border

as far as better looking,  i dont care what you look like as long as you can do the work..first time she/you bat them eyes , expecting special treatment,  your gone


----------



## bud16415

nealtw said:


> So you wouldn't be upset if people were coming from all over the world with your education and experience to compete for your job. and if one took your job because she will work twice the hours for half the pay and she is better looking?


 
No one has the right to a job. There is no requirement to have a job or no guarantee you will keep it. At the end of the week you get paid for the week you worked and you are all square. Im sure when I got my job there may have been someone else that felt they were better qualified than me. Its up to the guy that hires you if you get hired. There are people coming from all over the world to take jobs here and there always has been. My grandfather came from Germany and my grandmother from Sweden and they took jobs, I dont know if they took someone elses job or not. Unless you are a Native American you or your ancestor came here to take a job. 

Lots of people think they have lots of rights, you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and of course the bill of rights. You dont have the right to drive a car or have a job or own a house. The whole idea of being free is in return for being free you have to take care of yourself. The next part of that is the moral thing to do is help take care of those that cant take care of themselves. People helping people is much better than tax me take my money and then the government deciding who needs help and who doesnt. If thats the system you like there are plenty of socialist countries you can go live in. That wasnt the system designed in the constitution and the system that did more in 200 years than the whole history of mankind did before it.


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## nealtw

frodo said:


> if you wish to come here, LEGALLY and work I have no problem competing with you.
> 
> then it is mano e mano  may the best man win.
> 
> but,  if you are illegal, willing to work slave wages and slave hours
> 
> I just as soon turn you in or kick your butt back over the border
> 
> as far as better looking,  i dont care what you look like as long as you can do the work..first time she/you bat them eyes , expecting special treatment,  your gone



That wasn't the question.
It was your job for half the wages. The man is equall to you except you have the job he wants.


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## bud16415

You could look at it another way. Do you want to work for a guy that would throw you out and hire another guy for half your wage? Do all the other people that work for him want to stay there knowing that might happen to them?  After he does it are the rest of the people going to work as hard knowing they are next? Will they find out who hired you and be going over to that boss and getting a job? 

In Mexico when I was down there we were paying 50 cents an hour and I was down there about a month got to know the workers pretty well and left. I go back in 6 months and all new workers making 75 cents per hour and I ask what happen to the old people. Oh BMW put in a plant across the street and was paying 75 cents and they all left. That&#8217;s the way it works. 


If someone came and offered you double to take a job for them and you left would you feel sorry for your old boss.


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## nealtw

It's a wize man that sees a trap and steps around it.
Yes I have felt bad for a few bosses in my travels.
Yes supply and demand should apply to the wages of the day.
If you have to many hamburger stands the price should drop or the product should change or stores will close.
But if you have to many poor people that are willing to work, there is always some one to take that job.

We do expect certain things from the low wage earner, here they are required to to take a food safe coarse and most take that job as a profession with pride and maybe a first step after pulling themselves up by the boot straps
Do you not think that people who are in that situation or have worked thru that system, visit these pages.
Some of the discussions here are about very low end houses where people on the low end are doing there best to work there way up and be part of the middle class.

Just put yourself in those shoes for a while and go back a read some of the statements made in this thread and see how they would make you feel.
I think this site should be inclusive anything that would make people feel less than equall should not be posted.
There is an emotional side to every problem that is posted here and that should always be considered.


----------



## oldognewtrick

Having read through the thread, I don't get the impression that anything was stated with malice. Peoples life experiences give them a unique perspective of how they view the world and how they interact in it. I may agree or disagree with someone, but I can still respect their point of view, just may not be mine. 

Let's please keep things civil, cause really, we're all friends here...I hope.


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## frodo

I have no control over who the boss hires, hell no i would not like it

no one with a right mind would. 

but if the person is legal to work in this country, there is nothing i could do about it.

his/her company,,his/her rules

the government has no business setting the wages of a private owned company

as far as hiring a worker at a lower wage.

our profession is unique,  all the plumbers in town, pretty much know each other,  same with the owners.

if a owner pulled that crap in the plumbing communitee around here. it would not be long his doors would be closed,,no plumbers would work for him

that is a double edged sword,  if you are a sorry worker, the word goes out on you. no one will hire you.

plumbing supply houses are a meeting place,  early in the morning and in the evening
we are worse than old ladys on the back yard fence.


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## slownsteady

http://www.wnyc.org/story/work-we-know-it-disappearing/


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## slownsteady

A factor that we are all ignoring in this conversation is _globalization_. And I know this could open up a whole new 20 page discussion. But let's just look at it in this context for a minute.

In the past, there were certain factors that limited how low wages could go - namely the Atlantic and the Pacific. Employers had to make do with the workers that were here and those that had a way to make it to America. But now american workers are competing against chinese, indians, bangladeshis, thais,....and the list goes on. They work so cheap that it is worth it for companies to ship supplies there and ship products back and still make money on the deal. 

So, do we wait for all those people to rise to our economic level, where they refuse to work for peanuts? Or do we compete in a race to the bottom, where *we * keep taking pay cuts until the work comes back here?

and before you all respond with the usual, "the quality of our products is so much better" and all that jazz. Remember that with a few exceptions, it's bulls&1t


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## frodo

that is where the government does their job. 
slap HIGH tariffs or tax's  on goods that were outsourced
that tax will raise the price per unit up to where it would be uneconomical to outsource the work


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## bud16415

slownsteady said:


> A factor that we are all ignoring in this conversation is _globalization_. And I know this could open up a whole new 20 page discussion. But let's just look at it in this context for a minute.
> 
> In the past, there were certain factors that limited how low wages could go - namely the Atlantic and the Pacific. Employers had to make do with the workers that were here and those that had a way to make it to America. But now american workers are competing against chinese, indians, bangladeshis, thais,....and the list goes on. They work so cheap that it is worth it for companies to ship supplies there and ship products back and still make money on the deal.
> 
> So, do we wait for all those people to rise to our economic level, where they refuse to work for peanuts? Or do we compete in a race to the bottom, where *we *keep taking pay cuts until the work comes back here?
> 
> and before you all respond with the usual, "the quality of our products is so much better" and all that jazz. Remember that with a few exceptions, it's bulls&1t


 

Now you are talking about what is really happening. 

The article you linked was an interesting read but the premise was automation and robots are going to change the world into a place of hardly no work, The example they bring up over and over is Youngstown and their high unemployment. I live quite close to Youngstown and have been there in the hay day and been there recently and nowhere will you find buildings full of automation and robots replacing all the real people that you will find standing around out of work. What you will find is a lot of creepy rusted out old buildings with weeds growing in the parking lots where workers used to park and roofs falling in from neglect. No fat cat billionaire sitting there smoking a cigar as his self-contained robot plant runs itself spitting pipe onto train cars without human touch. If you would have went in those buildings 30 years ago thats what you would have seen. Along with all the automation you would have seen 10,000 cars in the parking lots and people all around these fully automated plants setting up the machines and repairing them and checking them and some just watching them ready to hit the red Estop button when something jammed up. 
Those plants are empty because the work went someplace else and that had nothing to do with automation. 

Now the question you ask is: So, do we wait for all those people to rise to our economic level, where they refuse to work for peanuts? Or do we compete in a race to the bottom, where we keep taking pay cuts until the work comes back here?
They are not going to come up to our standard of living ever. They will move up and we will move down to meet them half way if we are lucky. 
The big question is this. Is it happening to us? or Are we helping it happen? I dont have the answers to those questions but I do know we have one of the most successful presidents in the history of the country if you base success on doing what you said you were going to do when you ran for office. That is he said his desire was to fundamentally transform America. And in 8 years mission accomplished. 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/23/within-three-years-u-s-no-longer-no-1/

Dont believe me in his own words. 
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrefKCaV8m4"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrefKCaV8m4[/ame]


----------



## bud16415

nealtw said:


> Do you not think that people who are in that situation or have worked thru that system, visit these pages.
> Some of the discussions here are about very low end houses where people on the low end are doing there best to work there way up and be part of the middle class.
> 
> Just put yourself in those shoes for a while and go back a read some of the statements made in this thread and see how they would make you feel.
> I think this site should be inclusive anything that would make people feel less than equall should not be posted.
> There is an emotional side to every problem that is posted here and that should always be considered.


 

Neal I certainly hope nothing I ever say will offend anyone here and if I ever have I truly regret it and would like to say Im sorry. 

I can totally relate to anyone trying to work their way up and I myself have had many humbling occasions in my life where I couldnt make ends meet and had to eat humble pie. Right now Im living in a 24k house that I had to evict the rats before I started making it livable, and almost all the materials I put back into the place were free or Craigslist finds. All my threads here I started I hope are inspirational to others trying to make something out of nothing. Years of hard work have taught me how to get the most out of the least and I particularly like threads where someone is trying to do the same. 

I am a fan of hard love, I was raised that way and we dont know what we can do until we are tested by ourselves. I dont want to see people starve to death on the streets so someone else can have more. But trying and getting knocked down and trying again and on and on is not a bad thing if at some point you make a little progress. Some lessons dont pay off I have had many, but they do build character.


----------



## Chris

Prices have already started to rise on food and services in preparation of the wage increase.


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## oldognewtrick

Chris said:


> Prices have already started to rise on food and services in preparation of the wage increase.




Just wait, only the beginning.


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## bud16415

oldognewtrick said:


> Just wait, only the beginning.


 

Water will seek its own level and so will a free market system without someone tampering with it. As Chris points out hes noticing a rise in food and services already. Thats great except for the unintended consequences. There should be a fixed demand but in a tough economy spending becomes discretionary. The fast food worker gets a raise do to min wage going up. The fast food place has three ways to go but only two that are logical. First he could forgo his profits for the good of the country. Second he can lay some people off and do more with less pushing productivity by making workers work harder or finding ways of automation. Third he can raise prices. Also he can do some or all of the above in some combination. There comes a point in any business where you can make more money just investing your capital and sitting at home when you hit that point why run a business? The unintended consequence is people make choices with their limited funds. I go out for lunch quite a bit and if I can get lunch for 5 or 6 bucks and Im feeling lazy I will do that. If lunch becomes 8 or 10 bucks I do the math and say Holy Mackerel Im spending over 2 grand a year on fast food. Im packing a lunch. As soon as I make the decision the economy adjusts slightly. Slight changes by many people become great changes. The food place then corrects its plan again and a cycle begins over. 

We are seeing it here also. My dairy friends told me last week the milk bottling plants were turning away milk tanker trucks (the big silver tanker you see on the highways) sending them to the cheese plants and the cheese plants were full as demands are dropping. with nowhere to go and a time sensitive product the haulers were getting authorized to dump their loads. Too much for even the hog farmers to want. So 12 tankers got dumped in a manure digester. The number of people in the equation didnt change so you would think demand shouldnt have changed. Prices are fixed and controlled and the blowback to the farmers is lower prices. The farmers are selling out right and left and those hanging on are trying to shrink not grow. People selling replacement cows like my friends are actually giving them away with hopes when things turn around they will be paid. That worked for a time and now the working dairies are saying dont bring them over even for free. The guy with the replacement cows has no choice except selling them for beef and would have done better just raising a beef cow.


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## Chris

People are taught to not do the math of what they spend in the long run on anything. Makes for better control if you can avoid that.


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## frodo

$15 minimum wage biting Seattle in the butt


Once again, liberal logic (now THERE'S an oxymoron) has proved to be fallacious, as we who have a bit of common sense have seen time and again. Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all raised the minimum wage with the idea that it would "help lift workers out of poverty". Well, guess what - lots of those workers don't want to be lifted out of poverty. GASP! Who woulda thunk it??

And there is plenty of other fallout for customers and businesses, again just as we expected. The damn libtards who passed the wage increases apparently are seriously reality-challenged - couldn't they foresee the things that are happening now? Aw, man - all them workers need is a chance! It'll be blue birds and sunny skies from now on!!

Today's forecast - overcast with widespread showers of bird ****...

From Fox News...

Seattle&#8217;s $15 minimum wage law is supposed to lift workers out of poverty and move them off public assistance. But there may be a hitch in the plan.

Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise &#8211; in a bid to keep overall income down so they don&#8217;t lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent. Anybody who didn't think this would happen is either pretty damn naive or willfully stupid. Them social parasites don't want to lose them freebies.

Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.

&#8220;If they cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn&#8217;t actually help get them out of poverty, all you&#8217;ve done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people,&#8221; said Jason Rantz, host of the Jason Rantz show on 97.3 KIRO-FM.

The twist is just one apparent side effect of the controversial -- yet trendsetting -- minimum wage law in Seattle, which is being copied in several other cities despite concerns over prices rising and businesses struggling to keep up.

The notion that employees are intentionally working less to preserve their welfare has been a hot topic on talk radio. While the claims are difficult to track, state stats indeed suggest few are moving off welfare programs under the new wage. HELLOOO!!! I saw this exact same thing happening when I worked for Social Services during my first year with the state (my year in Hell). Most of them don't want to work, and if you do line them up with a job they look for some way to get out of it.

Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state&#8217;s welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376.

At the same time, prices appear to be going up on just about everything. Absolutely anyone with a grain of common sense should have known that this would happen. You raise wages, you gotta raise prices. SFL.

Some restaurants have tacked on a 15 percent surcharge to cover the higher wages. And some managers are no longer encouraging customers to tip, leading to a redistribution of income. Workers in the back of the kitchen, such as dishwashers and cooks, are getting paid more, but servers who rely on tips are seeing a pay cut.

Some long-time Seattle restaurants have closed altogether, though none of the owners publicly blamed the minimum wage law.

&#8220;It&#8217;s what happens when the government imposes a restriction on the labor market that normally wouldn&#8217;t be there, and marginal businesses get hit the hardest, and usually those are small, neighborhood businesses,&#8221; said Paul Guppy, of the Washington Policy Center.

Seattle was followed by San Francisco and Los Angeles in passing a $15 minimum wage law. The wage is being phased in over several years to give businesses time to adjust. The current minimum wage in Seattle is $11. In San Francisco, it&#8217;s $12.25.

And it is spreading. Beyond the city of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors this week also approved a $15 minimum wage.

New York state could be next, with the state Wage Board on Wednesday backing a $15 wage for fast-food workers, something Gov. Andrew Cuomo has supported. 

Already, though, there are unintended consequences in other cities. 

Comix Experience, a small book store in downtown San Francisco, has begun selling graphic novel club subscriptions in order to meet payroll. The owner, Brian Hibbs, admits members are not getting all that much for their $25 per month dues, but their &#8220;donation&#8221; is keeping him in business.

&#8220;I was looking at potentially having to close the store down and then how would I make my living?&#8221; Hibbs asked.

To date, he&#8217;s sold 228 subscriptions. He says he needs 334 to reach his goal of the $80,000 income required to cover higher labor costs. He doesn&#8217;t blame San Francisco voters for approving the $15 minimum wage, but he doesn&#8217;t think they had all the information needed to make a good decision.

The do-gooder liberals who passed this feel-good crap have only themselves and their rose-colored glasses to blame.


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## slownsteady

anything that foxnews says must be filtered before it can be consumed.


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## frodo

slownsteady said:


> anything that foxnews says must be filtered before it can be consumed.




fox news is just like any other news  it is slanted.

only fox news is slanted to the right and other news [abc,cnbc,]is slanted to the wrong,,

fox news will actually give you the news, it may be slanted, but they will report it.
unlike others who will ignore anything that makes the "poser" or his kind look bad

right this minute,,,poser is crying the IRS is underfunded

MAYBE,,If they wernt spending millions on attorneys and BS bonuses
AND trips to vegas to make star trek videos, they would have money


----------



## bud16415

slownsteady said:


> anything that foxnews says must be filtered before it can be consumed.


 

Everyones perspective is a function of their vantage point. Everyone has different truths and the nature of truth is there can only be one true truth. If it was math 2+2=4 every time and we assume that to be true truth. Just like with math life becomes more and more complex and there is still truth in the numbers if I were to write a complex integral calculus expression out here and tell you that it is truth without the vantage point of understanding integral calculus you may say no thats not truth or you dont know or not if its truth or you might take my word because you trust me and say ok thats truth. 
It is the same thing with complex problems involving something as simple as Minimum Wage but our vantage points are different and of course everyone wants what is best for everyone or the best outcome. Being able to move around a problem and open your eyes from several if not all vantage points is where people will find the best version of the true truth. Being able to do that without taking a bias from emotional connection to a problem or past strong beliefs is very hard to do.

To ask someone to filter FOX news is fine but shouldnt be asked unless you are equally ready to look at your supplier of your own version of your truths with equal skepticism. 

I tried to not voice my opinion without supplying some study material from a different vantage point on the subject to see if someone really wanted to look at a problem from all vantage points. I posted some links to Milton Freedman thoughts on such matters for all to watch. His thoughts and others helped me formulate my version of the truth. If with logic and persuasion someone can disprove my truth I would be more than willing to change my mind. I have on many subjects in my life. People that are open to change in their thought process are normally people that are viewing a problem from the best possible vantage point.


----------



## slownsteady

> To ask someone to filter FOX news is fine but shouldn&#8217;t be asked unless you are equally ready to look at your supplier of your own version of your truths with equal skepticism.



I do, constantly.


----------



## slownsteady

frodo said:


> fox news is just like any other news  it is slanted.



True



> only fox news is slanted to the right and other news [abc,cnbc,]is slanted to the wrong,,



if you think they are the only sources of news, you would be wrong



> fox news will actually give you the news, it may be slanted, but they will report it.


foxnews only gives you the news they want you to hear. They conveniently leave out the parts they aren't selling. True for some other news stations also.



> unlike others who will ignore anything that makes the "poser" or his kind look bad


When you dilute the "news" with your own opinion, and when you choose names and nicknames based on your biases, the facts (if any facts are present) become worthless.



> right this minute,,,poser is crying the IRS is underfunded
> 
> MAYBE,,If they wernt spending millions on attorneys and BS bonuses
> AND trips to vegas to make star trek videos, they would have money


----------



## mmb617

Higher wages = higher prices. I don't see how anyone can argue this isn't the case.

No one can force the market to adjust wages up while holding prices level. It just won't happen.

So those minimum wage workers who get a temporary raise will see it dissipate as prices catch up. And everyone who was already making more than minimum will see their buying power lessened unless they receive a proportionate raise, which will be a hard sell since it's not mandated.

The real losers are people like me, retirees who can do little to increase our income as prices shoot up.


----------



## nealtw

mmb617 said:


> Higher wages = higher prices. I don't see how anyone can argue this isn't the case.
> 
> No one can force the market to adjust wages up while holding prices level. It just won't happen.
> 
> So those minimum wage workers who get a temporary raise will see it dissipate as prices catch up. And everyone who was already making more than minimum will see their buying power lessened unless they receive a proportionate raise, which will be a hard sell since it's not mandated.
> 
> The real losers are people like me, retirees who can do little to increase our income as prices shoot up.



I guess it would be safe to assume you are a member of the middle class. You haven't kept up with inflation for 30 years. Prices go up whether the min. wage moves or not. It is true companies that have min. wage employees will have trouble moving everyone up the ladder and they will have to because they do pay more important employees a little more, but that happens pretty fast, as soon as they figure out all their compeditors have the same problem.

It is true that the real losers are the ones on fixed income, but we have choices on how we look at that. You might of been a lower pay scale so you couldn't afford to save for your retirement or you just choose not to bother.
The world dosn't stop when we get off the merry go round.
And to be fair, you don't have to buy a wardrobe or special boots for work, or pay for transpertation 5 days a week or babysitting, and hopefully you have paid off you education loans. As well as the fact you could choose to find a location with a cheaper cost of living.

These are just thoughts in general and not ment to be a personal attack.


----------



## slownsteady

mmb617 said:


> Higher wages = higher prices. I don't see how anyone can argue this isn't the case.
> 
> No one can force the market to adjust wages up while holding prices level. It just won't happen.
> 
> So those minimum wage workers who get a temporary raise will see it dissipate as prices catch up. And everyone who was already making more than minimum will see their buying power lessened unless they receive a proportionate raise, which will be a hard sell since it's not mandated.
> 
> The real losers are people like me, retirees who can do little to increase our income as prices shoot up.


definition of inflation.


----------



## frodo

bud16415 said:


> I used to have that very same circular slide rule, I wonder what ever happened to it. I bet it&#8217;s in the back of a desk drawer here some place.
> 
> As to the min wage milker never dumping hot milk into the bulk tank when the cow was tagged. We had one guy I nicknamed &#8220;Lumpy&#8221; that did it twice in one week. The first time he had a list of ear tag numbers of who was treated and the treated cows had bright red vet wrap on each hind leg about 6 inches wide and he was told 50 times when you milk a treated cow pull off the hose from the pipeline and attach it to the bucket. Milk the cow and then flush everything out with water and reattach the hose. So he milks one into the tank right at the end of milking and guess what open the valve and dump 10,000 lbs of milk in the manure pit. Few days later he has numbers, he has red tape and now he has cows that are spray painted red that you couldn&#8217;t miss from 100 yards away. Same thing another 10,000 lbs down the drain. Lumpy got fired after that and is now a certified KIA mechanic at the local dealership changing oil. I bought my filters and left.
> 
> Getting back on topic I never said there wasn&#8217;t a great out sourcing of work out of the country and there wasn&#8217;t a great deal of workers out of work in the country. What I said is automation and robots are not responsible for job loss (net) or work being taken to other countries.
> Neutron Jack Welch mantra was &#8220;Automate, Immigrate or Evaporate&#8221;.
> 
> Companies are not automating to get rid of jobs they are doing it to increase productivity. When that happens sales go up and companies expand and hire more people. Automation is a way to keep work from being outsourced to countries that pay nothing.
> 
> The way I apply logic is to look at a problem in reverse. Take Neal for example where he lives I&#8217;m sure they could use more jobs. Let&#8217;s look at his well automated profession and view it in reverse. Let&#8217;s de-automate all the products he uses and employ more people. We could start simple and take away his job killing power saw and nail gun for starter. That would employ at least 4x Neal. Get rid of the excavation equipment and we will save on pollution and make more jobs. One Neal in an excavator or 30x Neal with shovels. Keep in mind my calculations are based around building a home in the same amount of time we do today. I could go on about the job site but the true automation happens up stream of Neal he doesn&#8217;t see. Instead of getting a load of plywood and 2x4s lets deliver some logs to the site and saw them with a pit saw like the 150 year old homes here are made with. To get enough lumber and decking I would say you would need another 50x Neal. In short order at min wage labor we would have his town fully employed but the cost of the home would be out of reach of anyone working so we wouldn&#8217;t have a buyer and no buyer no jobs.
> 
> Take that analogy times a million and you have an economy.



I like your lumber reference,
lumber mill over here does not use automation  
I am not counting a conveyor belt or mill saw as automation 
and employs around 5 people
in the actual process, of course i am not adding the office worker or truck driver. 
you are debating minimum wage, that is already passed into law in seattle.
what I was referring to is the affects of minimum wage. or rather the unseen effects. being reported by fox news and other news agency's.

employer's cutting out 410 k, vacations, "freebie" meals.
patrons not leaving tips, due to meal price increase.
 which I am in favor of..
and the consequence that makes me chuckle,  the worker now wants their hours cut so they do not loose their "benefits"
I did a little math. 15 an hour is 30k per year and DOES make you ineligible for  food stamps.and other "goodies"

11 dollars  is 22,880 a year 


Household Size  in Seattle Washington food stamp eligible  income criteria 

                                            Monthly Income
persons per household....
1                                            $1,945 
2                                            $2,622 
3                                            $3,299 
4                                            $3,975 
5                                            $4,652

11.00 an hour is  $1,760  per mth
this will leave the person eligible for reduced food stamp benefits

this is what they are complaining about,  unforseen consequences


----------



## mmb617

nealtw said:


> I guess it would be safe to assume you are a member of the middle class.
> 
> I don't think I've been a member of the middle class for the last 25 years, since I've never made much over $30k/year in that time period. By most definitions I think we'd be the "working poor". I'd say we were middle class when we had two incomes, but my wife quit working to raise our son then never went back. That was our choice and I wouldn't change it.
> 
> You haven't kept up with inflation for 30 years.
> 
> I don't know about that. I usually got a raise each year and in low inflation times like we've had lately it was often enough to offset the inflation.
> 
> Prices go up whether the min. wage moves or not.
> 
> They do indeed. However I contend that higher minimum wages increase the rate at which they go up. You don't see it that way. We'll have to agree to disagree as I don't think either of us will swing the other to his view.
> 
> It is true companies that have min. wage employees will have trouble moving everyone up the ladder and they will have to because they do pay more important employees a little more, but that happens pretty fast, as soon as they figure out all their compeditors have the same problem.
> 
> And yet somehow this doesn't increase the rate of inflation?
> 
> It is true that the real losers are the ones on fixed income, but we have choices on how we look at that. You might of been a lower pay scale so you couldn't afford to save for your retirement or you just choose not to bother.
> 
> Or you could think that you were adequately prepared till runaway inflation changed things. And in my mind massive increases in minimum wage can only fuel massive inflation. I hope I'm wrong.
> 
> The world dosn't stop when we get off the merry go round.
> 
> It does not. There's no reason those who are still working should have any empathy for those who've worked their entire life and are now retired. Until they are in that position themselves, at which time they might feel differently.
> 
> And to be fair, you don't have to buy a wardrobe or special boots for work, or pay for transpertation 5 days a week or babysitting, and hopefully you have paid off you education loans.
> 
> LOL, at my last job I had company supplied uniforms, didn't need special footwear, drove a company van to and from work and had no kids at home, and of course no outstanding school loans.
> 
> I only mention this to show how far off assumptions can be.
> 
> As well as the fact you could choose to find a location with a cheaper cost of living.
> 
> If there's a place where the cost of living is substantially less than Altoona PA I'd like to know where it is. That is one big thing going for us.
> 
> These are just thoughts in general and not ment to be a personal attack.



I didn't take anything you said as a personal attack. There's nothing wrong with an exchange of ideas among people with differing viewpoints.

Maybe I've just been playing the game wrong my whole life. I never made big money, but never felt poor either. I think we have a lot. A nice home that's paid off, several nice although older vehicles, also paid off, and in general live what I consider comfortably. And I never needed the government to assist me, I made my own way.

But when I see things like people in entry level jobs thinking they should get a huge raise, and the government stepping in and mandating that they get it, I have to wonder, am I just a fool?

Maybe I should just sit back and let the government take care of me. That seems to be the trend these days.


----------



## nealtw

mmb617 said:


> Maybe I've just been playing the game wrong my whole life. I never made big money, but never felt poor either. I think we have a lot. A nice home that's paid off, several nice although older vehicles, also paid off, and in general live what I consider comfortably. And I never needed the government to assist me, I made my own way.
> 
> But when I see things like people in entry level jobs thinking they should get a huge raise, and the government stepping in and mandating that they get it, I have to wonder, am I just a fool?
> 
> Maybe I should just sit back and let the government take care of me. That seems to be the trend these days.



Working poor, you would have benefited from occasional raises that would have occurred with raises in min. wage.

We often see people saying the poor should pull themselves up by there boot straps. With that in mind your wages kept up with inflation but you should have been able to work your way up to better wages. The fact is there may not have been a better avenue to take for a whole bunch of reasons.

You are saying that there is a cause and effect to inflation and there may be but greed at the top, I think, has a lot more to do with it.
If a business man like Criss hires a worker for $25 an hour, he would like to send him out to work and charge maybe $50 an hour. That dosn't give Criss $25, he has all the supprot staff, and all the other expences and maybe if he is lucky he makes a little because he hired the man. Some like the hamburger guys, who pay 8 billion in wages world wide come home with a profit of 8 billion. These companies could well afford to pay a person what he or she is worth, or at least sell hamburgers at a much lower price, lowering inflation.

Run away inflation, while the banks are borrowing money from your government at less than inflation and what are they doing to grow the economy, shuffle money and give themselves raises, buy up companies give CEOs a golden parachute and hire another one for even more money who figures out how the lay some people off and raise the prices of the product.

Raising the min. wage wll increase inflation but it will also be used as an excuse to raise prices far beyond the actual cost.


I do agree we should not make assumptions and I don't like making them, that's why I did the disclaimer at the end of my post.

People in entry level jobs, who ask for a big raise. Not everyone can get an education and move up with a good firm and get stuck working in those jobs for people who could care less about their empoyees. It is the food workers that have been raising hell, but not likely where you live. Perhaps if they were a good firm, we wouldn't be talking today.


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## zannej

I think $15 is too high, but I do think the current minimum wage is too low. It would be nice if people were being paid a living wage. 

Unfortunately there is no legal way to stop companies from being greedy. My brother works at a department store where they are supposed to have a minimum of 12 employees to do all of the work. They have 7 and most of them are only hired part time so they don't have to pay for any medical benefits.

It seems that every time the government tries to make companies give benefits or more pay to the employees, even the companies that can afford it, are screwing the employees by laying them off, cutting their hours, or cutting raises. Unfortunately, I agree that raising it to $15 would prompt the greedy companies to drastically inflate prices, lay off workers, and cut hours again.

The area where I live is pretty much poverty levels. Median household income is less than $25k and sales tax is 10%. So, basically, it sucks.


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## Chris

Just FYI a 15 dollar an hour guy costs me after work comp and taxes about 23 per hour. That is before any support staff, trucks, fuel and consumables.


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## frodo

nealtw said:


> Working poor, you would have benefited from occasional raises that would have occurred with raises in min. wage.
> 
> .



  when an employer is forced to increase the minimum wage of a worker.
he will use the money he was going to use as your raise for that forced raise


----------



## mmb617

Let me just add, and maybe it's not relevant to this discussion, but when I first entered the workforce in 1969 the minimum wage was $1.60/hr and that's what I was paid. I didn't feel that I was somehow entitled to a higher wage, and I didn't intend to work for that wage indefinitely. I was a kid in my first full time job, and I had a lot to learn. Why should my employer be forced to pay me more than I was worth? First jobs are learning experiences, and other than the managers that's what fast food jobs generally are. The kids are learning about the world of work and should have an eye towards moving on to jobs that will pay more than minimum.

If you intend to make a career out of working a minimum wage job then you probably have other problems that prevent you from moving on to a real job. Does that mean society owes you a "living wage" job? I don't really know the answer to that. Maybe the fact that you're at least willing to go to work means it does. At least you have more initiative than the multitudes that use bogus disabilities to collect a government check without working at all. 

The main problem in my eyes is that the living wage minimum is a moving target. Mandating higher minimums moves all wages up long term and that raises prices on everything, so that the new higher minimum then needs raised again in order to remain a living wage thus starting the cycle over again. All this because government is causing a wage to be higher than the free market would dictate.

This is all a pretty academic discussion anyways. We have gone so far towards socialism that the concept of government setting wages is accepted without much dissent. It's just the way things are.


----------



## buffalo

Well 15/hr just passed in NY. I think it's over 7yrs. But from my understanding,  it's for fast food workers. So a minimum wage grocery store worker it dosn't effect.


----------



## zannej

frodo said:


> when an employer is forced to increase the minimum wage of a worker.
> he will use the money he was going to use as your raise for that forced raise



This is already happening at Walmart. They anticipate the minimum wage will go up to $9 so they increased it and then cut the raises for longer term employees in half. 

mmb167, one of the problems is that in some areas, about the only jobs available are minimum wage.

The idea of a person making $10 is practically unheard of around here. It's not even that people aren't trying to work their way up or get better jobs, sometimes there just aren't better jobs available and the people can't afford to just pick up and move. It's not like the old days where you could walk into a business and ask if they were hiring. Now they tell you "don't even call, you have to apply online". Only some of the places don't have their online stuff set up properly. And a lot of places are being cheap and are employing only half the workforce they actually need.

I wonder if the $11 an hour as Frodo suggested would work here. I think Walmart would just fire employees-- they already have a BS thing where they fire people who are eligible for bonuses for made-up reasons and write people up for BS when they are eligible for promotion so they can keep them at a lower pay. wage (aside from employer affordability or greed-- greed in the case of large corporations that make huge profits) is medical insurance rates. A friend of mine who works at Walmart juts got a small raise (less than $1) and her insurance raised her premiums by $100. She is not making an entire $100 more per month though, so its really screwing her.


----------



## frodo

zannej said:


> This is already happening at Walmart. They anticipate the minimum wage will go up to $9 so they increased it and then cut the raises for longer term employees in half.
> 
> mmb167, one of the problems is that in some areas, about the only jobs available are minimum wage.
> 
> The idea of a person making $10 is practically unheard of around here. It's not even that people aren't trying to work their way up or get better jobs, sometimes there just aren't better jobs available and the people can't afford to just pick up and move. It's not like the old days where you could walk into a business and ask if they were hiring. Now they tell you "don't even call, you have to apply online". Only some of the places don't have their online stuff set up properly. And a lot of places are being cheap and are employing only half the workforce they actually need.
> 
> I wonder if the $11 an hour as Frodo suggested would work here. I think Walmart would just fire employees-- they already have a BS thing where they fire people who are eligible for bonuses for made-up reasons and write people up for BS when they are eligible for promotion so they can keep them at a lower pay. wage (aside from employer affordability or greed-- greed in the case of large corporations that make huge profits) is medical insurance rates. A friend of mine who works at Walmart juts got a small raise (less than $1) and her insurance raised her premiums by $100. She is not making an entire $100 more per month though, so its really screwing her.





,  mcdonlds type jobs are not for entry level anymore.
that thinking is outdated.
with no jobs to be found.
people with degrees are working fast food or as wait staff to feed their families.
THAT is what everyone tells them to do.
IF you cant find a job in your field,  get a job flipping burgers.
teenager entry type jobs are now being jobs for the downsized

 common since and business savy
tells you if you have a bucget of  $100 k a year for employees.  and the wage is raised
you still have just 100 k..someone has got to go because of the budget
you can argue, the management is making to much money.
that arguement. IMO  makes about as much since as square wheels

why would someone run a business to make no money? they would not.
when their is no profit to be made,  you close the doors and no one works


----------



## nealtw

mmb617 said:


> Let me just add, and maybe it's not relevant to this discussion, but when I first entered the workforce in 1969 the minimum wage was $1.60/hr and that's what I was paid. I didn't feel that I was somehow entitled to a higher wage, and I didn't intend to work for that wage indefinitely. I was a kid in my first full time job, and I had a lot to learn. Why should my employer be forced to pay me more than I was worth? First jobs are learning experiences, and other than the managers that's what fast food jobs generally are. The kids are learning about the world of work and should have an eye towards moving on to jobs that will pay more than minimum.
> 
> If you intend to make a career out of working a minimum wage job then you probably have other problems that prevent you from moving on to a real job. Does that mean society owes you a "living wage" job? I don't really know the answer to that. Maybe the fact that you're at least willing to go to work means it does. At least you have more initiative than the multitudes that use bogus disabilities to collect a government check without working at all.
> 
> The main problem in my eyes is that the living wage minimum is a moving target. Mandating higher minimums moves all wages up long term and that raises prices on everything, so that the new higher minimum then needs raised again in order to remain a living wage thus starting the cycle over again. All this because government is causing a wage to be higher than the free market would dictate.
> 
> This is all a pretty academic discussion anyways. We have gone so far towards socialism that the concept of government setting wages is accepted without much dissent. It's just the way things are.



Why shouldn't wages be a moving target, the price you would sell your house for is a moving target, everything is a moving target. It is supply and demand as well as what ever the market will bear. We buy houses and invest in the market and hope for inflation so we can make some money, inflation is a good thing we hope. Anytime in history that there is a shortage of labour the country brings in more people to keep wages down and if the country woon't do it some companies hire illegles. When all that fails we just move the jobs elsewhere for cheap labour. It's not the poor that have their hands in your pockets. It's the companies that have empoyees on food stamps that are ripping you off.


----------



## bud16415

nealtw said:


> Why shouldn't wages be a moving target, the price you would sell your house for is a moving target, everything is a moving target. It is supply and demand as well as what ever the market will bear. We buy houses and invest in the market and hope for inflation so we can make some money, inflation is a good thing we hope. Anytime in history that there is a shortage of labour the country brings in more people to keep wages down and if the country woon't do it some companies hire illegles. When all that fails we just move the jobs elsewhere for cheap labour. It's not the poor that have their hands in your pockets. It's the companies that have empoyees on food stamps that are ripping you off.


 

I have been biting my tongue but it has to be said. 
Inflation is never a good thing. 

This idea that at 20 years old I buy a home and have to pay on it for 30 years and during that 30 years inflation causes the prices of everything to go up and the follow on effect is my employer is going to give me meaningless raises to keep up with inflation and thats a good thing as Im paying off my home with inflated dollars. So at the end of the 30 years my last payment is really say one tenth of my first payment in terms of real buying power. But do to inflation my house has also went up in value. That sure seems like a great thing doesnt it. 
So where did the extra real buying power go? There is no magic in economy the tally sheet has to balance at the end of the day. Think about it if my house payment started out at $100 per month and my pay was $100 per week in the beginning and my home was valued at say $10,000. Now fast forward 30 years my payment is still $100 my earnings are now $1000 per week and my house is now worth $100,000. Those are fairly accurate numbers during my life. Again who took the hit for my good fortune? Was it the evil banking institutions backed by the excessive profits of the evil industrial complex. Was it the government? Think about that where did the extra money come from? 
Suppose Neal had a car for sale and Bud went over and said wow thats a nice car Neal Ill take it you want $10,000 for it sure thats a good price. So here is my offer Ill take the car and I will pay you in 30 years for it and then at the end of the 30 years Ill give you $5,000 and we will be all square. Neal says sounds good to me, we shake hands and I drive away in my new car.
Again whos taking the hit for inflation? If it was magic and more money could grow on trees why not let it just run rampant after all its a good thing right. Why make a guy wait 30 years for a house for half price lets ramp up inflation 10X and we could all have nice houses paid off in 3 years not 30, oh and we could all be making a million a year in no time. 
Who can tell me whos taking the hit? There is an old saying and its very true. There is no such thing as a free lunch.


----------



## frodo

bud16415 said:


> I have been biting my tongue but it has to be said.
> Inflation is never a good thing.
> 
> This idea that at 20 years old I buy a home and have to pay on it for 30 years and during that 30 years inflation causes the prices of everything to go up and the follow on effect is my employer is going to give me meaningless raises to keep up with inflation and thats a good thing as Im paying off my home with inflated dollars. So at the end of the 30 years my last payment is really say one tenth of my first payment in terms of real buying power. But do to inflation my house has also went up in value. That sure seems like a great thing doesnt it.
> So where did the extra real buying power go? There is no magic in economy the tally sheet has to balance at the end of the day. Think about it if my house payment started out at $100 per month and my pay was $100 per week in the beginning and my home was valued at say $10,000. Now fast forward 30 years my payment is still $100 my earnings are now $1000 per week and my house is now worth $100,000. Those are fairly accurate numbers during my life. Again who took the hit for my good fortune? Was it the evil banking institutions backed by the excessive profits of the evil industrial complex. Was it the government? Think about that where did the extra money come from?
> Suppose Neal had a car for sale and Bud went over and said wow thats a nice car Neal Ill take it you want $10,000 for it sure thats a good price. So here is my offer Ill take the car and I will pay you in 30 years for it and then at the end of the 30 years Ill give you $5,000 and we will be all square. Neal says sounds good to me, we shake hands and I drive away in my new car.
> Again whos taking the hit for inflation? If it was magic and more money could grow on trees why not let it just run rampant after all its a good thing right. Why make a guy wait 30 years for a house for half price lets ramp up inflation 10X and we could all have nice houses paid off in 3 years not 30, oh and we could all be making a million a year in no time.
> Who can tell me whos taking the hit? There is an old saying and its very true. There is no such thing as a free lunch.




your forgetting something.

the house cost 100 dollars
the bank loaned you the 100 dollars
you paid the buyer
the bank is charging you interest compounded for the life of the 30 year loan,

the bank will get the interest of 200 dollars before you pay the principal of 100

so the bank wins a 200% profit on the loan

YOU, being the borrower, are taking the hit

if you want to beat that game, go with a 15 year loan and double up on payments, make 2 payments each mth
1 to principal, the other to interest
...........................................
rounded numbers for clariety


----------



## nealtw

bud16415 said:


> I have been biting my tongue but it has to be said.
> Inflation is never a good thing.
> 
> This idea that at 20 years old I buy a home and have to pay on it for 30 years and during that 30 years inflation causes the prices of everything to go up and the follow on effect is my employer is going to give me meaningless raises to keep up with inflation and thats a good thing as Im paying off my home with inflated dollars. So at the end of the 30 years my last payment is really say one tenth of my first payment in terms of real buying power. But do to inflation my house has also went up in value. That sure seems like a great thing doesnt it.
> So where did the extra real buying power go? There is no magic in economy the tally sheet has to balance at the end of the day. Think about it if my house payment started out at $100 per month and my pay was $100 per week in the beginning and my home was valued at say $10,000. Now fast forward 30 years my payment is still $100 my earnings are now $1000 per week and my house is now worth $100,000. Those are fairly accurate numbers during my life. Again who took the hit for my good fortune? Was it the evil banking institutions backed by the excessive profits of the evil industrial complex. Was it the government? Think about that where did the extra money come from?
> Suppose Neal had a car for sale and Bud went over and said wow thats a nice car Neal Ill take it you want $10,000 for it sure thats a good price. So here is my offer Ill take the car and I will pay you in 30 years for it and then at the end of the 30 years Ill give you $5,000 and we will be all square. Neal says sounds good to me, we shake hands and I drive away in my new car.
> Again whos taking the hit for inflation? If it was magic and more money could grow on trees why not let it just run rampant after all its a good thing right. Why make a guy wait 30 years for a house for half price lets ramp up inflation 10X and we could all have nice houses paid off in 3 years not 30, oh and we could all be making a million a year in no time.
> Who can tell me whos taking the hit? There is an old saying and its very true. There is no such thing as a free lunch.



I pointed out the one or two places the little guy can take advantage of inflation. How would it be if you were still making $400 momth, if you never got a raise. Do you think inflation would have stopped. I am not advocating for the little guy to get ahead just the tools to keep up. Do you really think the country, any country is better off when there are more and more poor every year?


----------



## frodo

nealtw said:


> I pointed out the one or two places the little guy can take advantage of inflation. How would it be if you were still making $400 momth, if you never got a raise. Do you think inflation would have stopped. I am not advocating for the little guy to get ahead just the tools to keep up. Do you really think the country, any country is better off when there are more and more poor every year?


 
you are born with a tool box [your brain] it is up to YOU to fill it with tools[knowledge]

it is not the responsibility of the government

if you are making $400 a month,  it is up to YOU to move your self up

not the government.

some people seem to want to ignore the fact that you are responsible for you

that if you lack ambition,  that is your problem.


----------



## bud16415

nealtw said:


> I pointed out the one or two places the little guy can take advantage of inflation. How would it be if you were still making $400 momth, if you never got a raise. Do you think inflation would have stopped. I am not advocating for the little guy to get ahead just the tools to keep up. Do you really think the country, any country is better off when there are more and more poor every year?


 
Frodo hit the nail on the head. There is no such thing as a free lunch. As a young man buying that first home in the days of Jimmy Carter with high inflation You had to pay 18% on a 30 mortgage to get that dream house to pay off with inflated money. People were camping in bank parking lots to get 12% government backed loans to encourage first time buyers. I know because I spent two days sitting in a lawn chair in line. During those two long nights in the aluminum chair I had time to think about inflation. My father in law stopped by with a couple burgers for me for dinner and explained if I thought the interest rates were high to buy a house think about what those same rates were doing to small business loans. Inflation was then and will always be a crippling disease to a country. No one wins ever. The price you pay for any of this nonsense really boils down to your children and grandchildren are going to pay the price. 

Frodos advice is solid about repaying a loan. Two years ago we took it a step beyond his advice even and bought an abandoned rat trap of a short sale property for 24k cash. We added a lot of sweat equity with maybe another 15k of new and used materials over 2 years. We now have a nice place with paying absolutely zero interest to any bank and no house payment. We could have very easily went the easy route and financed 250k and had a really great place to live in and felt the blood drain from our bodies for the next 20 or 30 years. 
How many people remember when 3 years was the longest term you could get a car loan for? Now its 5 or more years. As a young kid my dad explained to me about buying a car. He said you want the shortest term you can possible handle and cash is best. He said if you can afford a brand new car you need to be able to pay it off in 2 years if its going to take 3 then you really cant afford it. I said what difference does it make 2, 3 or 10 years. He said cars depreciate and at 3 years you risk being upside down. Thats whenever you still owe more than its worth. Sounded right to me then and it still does. Cars still depreciate maybe even faster and most of the cars on the road people are upside down on payments. 

Inflation is not good, and I dont think any country is better off when there are more and more poor people every year. Inflation causes poor people it doesnt ever help them. What gets rid of poor people is a prospering economy, a healthy economy and jobs not wages. If it was so simple everyone could stop working except a few people at the mint printing money. Let the presses fly and send out cash to everyone. As it is right now we are going down that path not sending it to everyone just maybe 1/3. 

In the end all economy works the same and the balance sheet has to balance. Every year at Christmas I used to give my brother in law a card with 50 bucks in it as a gift. He would give me a card with 50 bucks also. Couple years ago around thanksgiving he said you know Bud times are getting tough I think we should cut back this Christmas to 20 bucks. I was really relieved as it was getting hard to come up with 50.


----------



## Chris

Well, governor signed the bill. Over the next five years the minimum wage will climb to 15 dollars an hour.

The news interviewed several business owners and several minimum wage workers. All the workers think it's the greatest thing and every owner said how they are just going to have to raise prices.

At first I thought it wouldn't affect me as I only have one employee at close to minimum but my other employees who are currently making 18 an hour are making comments about how they need a raise so they aren't taking such a big pay cut. Right now they are double the minimum but will be close to minimum once the increase goes into effect. Then what?


----------



## frodo

NAAAAAAA  It will not effect jobs, no way,  



http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-garment-manufacturing-la-20160416-story.html


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## Chris

One by one the news reports of large companies laying off and closing down due to wage increases


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## kok328

If your a large company and only paying minimum wage and the increase is forcing you out of business then no big loss cause nobody can live on minimun wage and your profits stayed at the top with the CEO.


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## Chris

Not necessarily. I know plenty of smaller companies that are struggling as well because of this. And if they are not it is only because they raised prices and have the consumer paying the wage hike. Take a pizza joint with 8 employees at 10 bucks an hour, the owner barely making wages himself. Now after the hike he either has to let go three employees and over work the rest or raise prices. Now just because a company has built itself to 100 employees or more does not mean the owner or CEO is getting rich. I know plenty of owners of these company just making a paycheck like an employee. I do agree that yes some companies are doing great and the CEO is taking a big chunk while not sharing the wealth but do you think he will pay a wage hike out of his profits or just raise his prices like all his competition did? 

It's the same principle as trying to tax a corporation higher. It just raises prices for everyone. When my material prices go up so do my bids, it's all inflation one way or another.

Back to raised wages, now rent, home values and every other commodity has gone up as well, in reality we didn't raise wages we just raised inflation and lowered wages for everyone else in the work force. Do you agree?


----------



## bud16415

3 minutes and 39 seconds of pure logic 


[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk[/ame]


----------



## nealtw

&#8220;Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.&#8221; 
&#8213; Emma Lazarus

These are the people that took  the jobs that (Americans wouldn't do)
They were put to work in fire trap buildings, in ditches, building railroads, anywhere cheap labour was needed.
They were hated, everyone of them because Americans would have done the work if they were paid a living wage.
Now you hate Mexicans for the same reason, what a surprise.

Make America Great Again.


----------



## Chris

He is a very smart man.


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## frodo

Milton was spot on


----------



## Chris

nealtw said:


> Give me your tired, your poor,
> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
> I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
> &#8213; Emma Lazarus
> 
> These are the people that took  the jobs that (Americans wouldn't do)
> They were put to work in fire trap buildings, in ditches, building railroads, anywhere cheap labour was needed.
> They were hated, everyone of them because Americans would have done the work if they were paid a living wage.
> Now you hate Mexicans for the same reason, what a surprise.
> 
> Make America Great Again.




I don't hate Mexicans or any other person. Some of my best employees are Mexican and not doing any job I wouldn't do or have done. They are not cheap labor as any and almost all mexicans in California legal or not are requesting top pay just like any other nationality. I actually pay them more than white people that have worked for me because they were raised with a better work ethic.

What I do hate is Criminals and Criminal Illegal Mexicans because they are held to a different law then US born people. They can have five felonies and been in and out of jail their whole lives and they still walk the streets when a US born person would have been locked up for a very long time after their second or third felony and would not be on the streets to commit another. If we deported Criminal illegals then they wouldn't be here to commit those crimes but instead we feel bad for them and let them live in a sanctuary city until they kill someone then we feed and house them for the rest of their lives. I can guarantee that most all conservatives don't hate foreigners in any way and can even tolerate illegal aliens that are here to work and be a productive member of society but they are against Illegal criminals coming in and the Left seems to keep trying to group the conservatives as being racist or hating Mexicans because they hate criminals. I am not sure where you got that we hate Mexicans from but you are very wrong. I/we feel the same way of the Illegal Chinese and all others crossing our borders illegally to commit crimes or bring drugs to our youth. I find it odd that you don't agree!


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## Chris

And don't forget there is not a single country out there that has open borders to any and all that want to come live there. There is always a process and paperwork even from Mexico to here.


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## frodo

Neal,  you are completely wrong about the immigrant workers during the period of 
1800's thru 1920
http://www.manythings.org/voa/history/135.html

the country was booming and immigrants and farm boys [Americans]  worked side by side at the same pay.

TRUE..that UNSKILLED workers were paid a low wage
untrue that skilled workers were paid a low wage

and that is how it should b


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## bud16415

I added the rest of the lines Neal left off. (First Draft)

Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Come in the front door and say hi Im here.
Tell us who you are and why you came here.
Please fill out a few papers and allow us to give you temporary documentation.
Please read and understand our laws and obey them.
Please fill out these forms applying for citizenship. 
Understand your turn will come and you must wait your turn. 
Take our classes and learn what it means to be a citizen here.
Go to our court house and swear an oath and become a citizen.
Now you are an American you can be anything you want here work hard pay taxes and vote.


----------



## nealtw

When I said you hate, I didn't mean you or even most people hate, but listen to the way they are talked about in the Media.
Ask a Mexican if they feel hated, ask them why they protested Trump. You sure stood up for your friends.

Products like drugs go where the market is, talk to your Doctors about getting people hooked on drugs they can't afford to buy.

Do you think that if you got all the drug dealers out of the country there would be no drugs, give me a break.


----------



## nealtw

Chris said:


> And don't forget there is not a single country out there that has open borders to any and all that want to come live there. There is always a process and paperwork even from Mexico to here.



Simple solve. 
Make it easy for an employer to check the paper work and jail anyone who highers some one that does not have that paper work.
Give them more time if they paid less than the min. wage.
Next.


----------



## Chris

nealtw said:


> When I said you hate, I didn't mean you or even most people hate, but listen to the way they are talked about in the Media.
> Ask a Mexican if they feel hated, ask them why they protested Trump. You sure stood up for your friends.
> 
> Products like drugs go where the market is, talk to your Doctors about getting people hooked on drugs they can't afford to buy.
> 
> Do you think that if you got all the drug dealers out of the country there would be no drugs, give me a break.



Every hard working Mexican I know voted Trump. If you look at the Mexican culture you will see that they live a more Conservative life than most conservatives.

No, Drugs will never fully be gone but should we just give up and invite them in or keep fighting? I have a good buddy that doesn't vote because "his vote doesn't matter anyway" If we all had that attitude you have we would end up in a horrible place. Just because we will never rid this country of Drugs, Illegals, poverty and crime doesn't mean we should give up and let it run free does it?


----------



## Chris

nealtw said:


> Simple solve.
> Make it easy for an employer to check the paper work and jail anyone who highers some one that does not have that paper work.
> Give them more time if they paid less than the min. wage.
> Next.



That would be nice and I heard they were trying to do something like that. But like I said I don't know of any person illegal or not getting paid less than minimum wage here in California and I am not secluded in some dream, I am smack dab in the middle of all this illegal hiring stuff working construction. It's hard finding legal Mexicans in my business. For me, no papers = no work, I do government work so that would never fly.


----------



## frodo

first,  you must make the distinction between illegal and legal.

legal immigrants are not ''hated'' they are welcome and needed here
illegal's are hated and not wanted here.

when you get those 2 distinctions figured out, then you can understand 

your suggestion to vet workers and jail employers is a good suggestion,  one that is being kicked around on the hill
i think it will be called E-Verify
that and a wall to keep those with wondering feet from wondering the wrong way is a very good start

I wonder every time the minimum wage debate comes up.  why liberals   want illegals to do there work cheaply.
and at the same time, want minimum wage to increase.

boggles my mind.


----------



## Chris

frodo said:


> first,  you must make the distinction between illegal and legal.
> 
> legal immigrants are not ''hated'' they are welcome and needed here
> illegal's are hated and not wanted here.
> 
> when you get those 2 distinctions figured out, then you can understand
> 
> your suggestion to vet workers and jail employers is a good suggestion,  one that is being kicked around on the hill
> i think it will be called E-Verify
> that and a wall to keep those with wondering feet from wondering the wrong way is a very good start
> 
> I wonder every time the minimum wage debate comes up.  why liberals   want illegals to do there work cheaply.
> and at the same time, want minimum wage to increase.
> 
> boggles my mind.



These Liberals are also the same ones that come apply to work in my office wanting 50k+ a year to start with absolutely no experience and a degree in the arts. To me they are worth minimum wage and once they prove they know what they are doing I bump them up.


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## Chris

I think people forget that a living wage is not a house in the suburbs with cable TV, internet and a cell phone and a new car or two in the driveway. When I was growing up a living wage was a shared apartment and a bus pass or crappy old car I had to work on, no cable TV, no internet and a land line phone for 7 bucks a month. I didn't eat out and I lived just fine. If I wanted to live on my own I got a studio or other small rental. I did it on 4 bucks an hour and didn't complain. When I wanted more money I got a second job and worked even harder. It's really not that hard to figure out unless you are lazy.


----------



## nealtw

Chris said:


> I think people forget that a living wage is not a house in the suburbs with cable TV, internet and a cell phone and a new car or two in the driveway. When I was growing up a living wage was a shared apartment and a bus pass or crappy old car I had to work on, no cable TV, no internet and a land line phone for 7 bucks a month. I didn't eat out and I lived just fine. If I wanted to live on my own I got a studio or other small rental. I did it on 4 bucks an hour and didn't complain. When I wanted more money I got a second job and worked even harder. It's really not that hard to figure out unless you are lazy.



Most of the  people looking for that raise are in the big blue cities.
How about you find an apartment you could live in on min wage in NY
I do agree that min. wage should be local thing.
Seattle is doing fine after they raised theirs.


----------



## Chris

I would move away from NY city to a place I could afford. Not everyone has the money to live waterfront either.

I live in the desert, not because I enjoy it here but because I can afford to live a nice life here. Same reason I'm going to idaho, it's cheaper and I don't have to work so hard.


----------



## Chris

I don't request more money so I can live in LA.


----------



## nealtw

Chris said:


> I would move away from NY city to a place I could afford. Not everyone has the money to live waterfront either.
> 
> I live in the desert, not because I enjoy it here but because I can afford to live a nice life here. Same reason I'm going to idaho, it's cheaper and I don't have to work so hard.



Why do people move to the big cities, that's where the work is.
Why not say to coal miners pick up and move to where the jobs are.
You will find in Idaho, you will work for less also.
Just saying.

I just think sometimes you have to step back and takes statements people say at different times and try to make sense of it.


----------



## Chris

Jobs are everywhere. Big cities have more corporate type jobs but a big city is not the place for everyone or every job. 

I did the research and prices for what I do are the same and in some cases higher in idaho with a lot less regulation and fees so I would get a pay raise if I kept doing what I do


----------



## nealtw

Chris said:


> Jobs are everywhere. Big cities have more corporate type jobs but a big city is not the place for everyone or every job.
> 
> I did the research and prices for what I do are the same and in some cases higher in idaho with a lot less regulation and fees so I would get a pay raise if I kept doing what I do



And as soon as you get there, there will be one more guy competing for the work. You might win by location but if the competitors are close, how do you break into that market.
I presume the work is being done now, enough work to support the industry and enough industry to support the work.  Each new competitor makes the piece of pie smaller.


----------



## Chris

I'll do it tge same way I did here, work hard, be honest and do 120% and always attention to detail. 

Where I live now is no different. It's not like I live in LA. 

If you are good at what you do work hard and are honest you will succeed no matter where you are


----------



## buffalo

Chris said:


> I think people forget that a living wage is not a house in the suburbs with cable TV, internet and a cell phone and a new car or two in the driveway. When I was growing up a living wage was a shared apartment and a bus pass or crappy old car I had to work on, no cable TV, no internet and a land line phone for 7 bucks a month. I didn't eat out and I lived just fine. If I wanted to live on my own I got a studio or other small rental. I did it on 4 bucks an hour and didn't complain. When I wanted more money I got a second job and worked even harder. It's really not that hard to figure out unless you are lazy.



THIS^

My younger years were not easy , and tbh I am making it now but I don't have nice things . I dint finish highschool , home life was tuff and I lived out of my car alot in high school , the reason i dint finish , I'm not proud of it . But I got my GED , I worked minimum wage for years , did the 2 job thing . Got into an apprenticeship and busted *** . I always tried to work harder than the other guy . 

Fast forward , I make a good living now . Not rich by any means , I support 3 kids and a wife . She just started working 2 years ago which helps but she dosnt make much . I drive an 02 truck , I don't have Internet or cable TV , I don't have toys to speak of . Basically we cut out all the BS and only buy what we need . Yes we have been building our house , but we have no nice furniture or things like that . 

It's about making the money strech for the important things . I don't believe a "living wage " is an entitlement .


----------



## frodo

nealtw said:


> And as soon as you get there, there will be one more guy competing for the work. You might win by location but if the competitors are close, how do you break into that market.
> I presume the work is being done now, enough work to support the industry and enough industry to support the work.  Each new competitor makes the piece of pie smaller.




I needed a job,  Could not find one anywhere, So I threw my stuff into a mustang and headed out.
I came across a plumbing shop and asked for a job. the man said he was not hiring at this time.
I told him.
Give me a shot, I will work for you FREE for 3 days, If at the end of that time
you are not satisfied with my work...I walk, no hard feelings
IF, you think I would be an asset to your company
I want top pay, I worked for him for 2 years,  Left voluntary to go back home when some jobs opened up.

CANT find a job?   you aint looking hard enough,  sometimes you hang it ALL on the line.


----------



## frodo

buffalo said:


> THIS^
> 
> My younger years were not easy , and tbh I am making it now but I don't have nice things . I dint finish highschool , home life was tuff and I lived out of my car alot in high school , the reason i dint finish , I'm not proud of it . But I got my GED , I worked minimum wage for years , did the 2 job thing . Got into an apprenticeship and busted *** . I always tried to work harder than the other guy .
> 
> Fast forward , I make a good living now . Not rich by any means , I support 3 kids and a wife . She just started working 2 years ago which helps but she dosnt make much . I drive an 02 truck , I don't have Internet or cable TV , I don't have toys to speak of . Basically we cut out all the BS and only buy what we need . Yes we have been building our house , but we have no nice furniture or things like that .
> 
> It's about making the money strech for the important things . I don't believe a "living wage " is an entitlement .



I hear ya...When I was an apprentice, I lived in a van,  scrounged coke bottles for gas money, My plumber fed me,,,BUT. I HUNG in there and learned


----------



## zannej

frodo said:


> I needed a job,  Could not find one anywhere, So I threw my stuff into a mustang and headed out.
> I came across a plumbing shop and asked for a job. the man said he was not hiring at this time.
> I told him.
> Give me a shot, I will work for you FREE for 3 days, If at the end of that time
> you are not satisfied with my work...I walk, no hard feelings
> IF, you think I would be an asset to your company
> I want top pay, I worked for him for 2 years,  Left voluntary to go back home when some jobs opened up.
> 
> CANT find a job?   you aint looking hard enough,  sometimes you hang it ALL on the line.


You had a Mustang and you had gas to be able to travel. Some people don't have enough $ for transportation. Where I live there is no public transportation system so even if people had the $ to take a bus, there isn't one available.

Sadly those days are mostly over-- at least where I live. I know people who searched and searched for jobs but got told "Don't call, don't talk to me. Submit an application online." Sometimes it can take up to 2 years or more before a person can find another job-- if they can find one at all. 

Things are particularly bad where I live because for one it is an "At Will" state so they can (and do) fire people for total BS and people get denied unemployment.

Waitstaff get paid less than minimum wage (they find loopholes to get around actually meeting minimum wage-- so they get like $2 to $4 an hour), people have to work two to three jobs but that means fewer jobs for other people, a lot of places only keep a skeleton staff and only work them an hour shy of fulltime hours.

But then, my state is in the crapper because Jindal repealed a bill that was voted in to place by the citizens that lost the state $800million in revenue annually AND he started up some BS where corporations (particularly ones he invested in) got tax breaks that actually gave them back more money than they paid in. During his reign, most of the unemployment offices closed (so people were told they had to file online but most didn't have computers) and then they shut down a lot of the public libraries, hospitals and clinics shut down so it takes months to get an appointment, and sales tax is up to 11% which means a lot of the poorer people can't afford to buy stuff-- which further hurts the economy. Granted the gas prices going down also made the economy take a hit, but it might not have been so bad if not for the other bad decisions.

Now, I don't think people should be getting paid $15 an hour for flipping burgers-- but I do think that they should get maybe $9 or $10 instead of less than $8. It's especially bad since most employees are only given part time hours so the companies can avoid giving them medical and other benefits. They fire lower tier people but they give big bonuses to higher ups.

I know that this is not necessarily representative of other places-- Louisiana is a particular effed up state right now.

But I do know that in general, the wages have not stayed proportional to inflation. There were studies that showed that if places like Walmart paid a living wage, it would only reduce their profits by 1%.


----------



## frodo

I had $200.00 dollars in my pocket,   and a mustang that used oil and needed brakes. lol.
tag was expired and no insurance. 


your whole post is one big propaganda lie ,  according to the obama administration.

there is a surplus of jobs in the US, . unemployment is at an all time low,


----------



## Chris

zannej said:


> You had a Mustang and you had gas to be able to travel. Some people don't have enough $ for transportation. Where I live there is no public transportation system so even if people had the $ to take a bus, there isn't one available.
> 
> Sadly those days are mostly over-- at least where I live. I know people who searched and searched for jobs but got told "Don't call, don't talk to me. Submit an application online." Sometimes it can take up to 2 years or more before a person can find another job-- if they can find one at all.
> 
> Things are particularly bad where I live because for one it is an "At Will" state so they can (and do) fire people for total BS and people get denied unemployment.
> 
> Waitstaff get paid less than minimum wage (they find loopholes to get around actually meeting minimum wage-- so they get like $2 to $4 an hour), people have to work two to three jobs but that means fewer jobs for other people, a lot of places only keep a skeleton staff and only work them an hour shy of fulltime hours.
> 
> But then, my state is in the crapper because Jindal repealed a bill that was voted in to place by the citizens that lost the state $800million in revenue annually AND he started up some BS where corporations (particularly ones he invested in) got tax breaks that actually gave them back more money than they paid in. During his reign, most of the unemployment offices closed (so people were told they had to file online but most didn't have computers) and then they shut down a lot of the public libraries, hospitals and clinics shut down so it takes months to get an appointment, and sales tax is up to 11% which means a lot of the poorer people can't afford to buy stuff-- which further hurts the economy. Granted the gas prices going down also made the economy take a hit, but it might not have been so bad if not for the other bad decisions.
> 
> Now, I don't think people should be getting paid $15 an hour for flipping burgers-- but I do think that they should get maybe $9 or $10 instead of less than $8. It's especially bad since most employees are only given part time hours so the companies can avoid giving them medical and other benefits. They fire lower tier people but they give big bonuses to higher ups.
> 
> I know that this is not necessarily representative of other places-- Louisiana is a particular effed up state right now.
> 
> But I do know that in general, the wages have not stayed proportional to inflation. There were studies that showed that if places like Walmart paid a living wage, it would only reduce their profits by 1%.



Once the part of only working people 28 hours to avoid the health care is another problem the government created. Not every company can afford health care and some just don't want to offer it. Either way the government came in and told these companies that they are not allowed to give you enough hours to pay your bills. I know many companies that would hire you part time yet still give you close to 40 hours a week but you didn't have benefits, which is a lot better than 28 hours I think?


----------



## zannej

Chris said:


> Once the part of only working people 28 hours to avoid the health care is another problem the government created. Not every company can afford health care and some just don't want to offer it. Either way the government came in and told these companies that they are not allowed to give you enough hours to pay your bills. I know many companies that would hire you part time yet still give you close to 40 hours a week but you didn't have benefits, which is a lot better than 28 hours I think?


Good point. That part of the ACA was a major flop. The corporate greed of the larger companies meant screwing over employees and the smaller companies couldn't afford it.

And I just re-read and realized that my post was not very clear. The tax thing that was in place before Jindal was very helpful and we had a surplus in the budget but when Jindal axed it, we lost $800million in revenue annually from that alone.

I don't think there are any perfect solutions to the current wage problem. It would be nice if there were juts more jobs in general to go around. I wish more companies had the attitude of the head of Costco-- with paying employees well. But they can afford it.


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## bud16415

Read about this guy. 

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq8gQJpT_8M[/ame]


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## buffalo

bud16415 said:


> Read about this guy.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq8gQJpT_8M



Cool , but an average Joe could not do that . Alot of those jobs require learned skills .


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## slownsteady

That's right. Evidently, this guy is working with a team to create videos; kind of like "Dirty Jobs", or whatever that show was called.


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## frodo

buffalo said:


> Cool , but an average Joe could not do that . Alot of those jobs require learned skills .



i learned skills sleeping in a van and going to work every day to a minimum wage job.

the reason i say this,  is in my opinion, kids now, will not do what it takes to reach any goal

if it is not handed to them,  easy to obtain.  then it is to hard. 

they want supervisor pay with out knowing what the job is.


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## buffalo

frodo said:


> i learned skills sleeping in a van and going to work every day to a minimum wage job.
> 
> the reason i say this,  is in my opinion, kids now, will not do what it takes to reach any goal
> 
> if it is not handed to them,  easy to obtain.  then it is to hard.
> 
> they want supervisor pay with out knowing what the job is.



I get it :thbup:. My only thought was me or you could not obtain these jobs week to week . We could get one with dedication and will , over time .


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## Chris

I could adapt and probably do a different job every week. I am good at figuring things out and working hard


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## Chris

I agree with frodo that youth nowadays is not like what we all had to do growing up. We were all pretty self sufficient at a younger age, our parents let us or made us responsible for ourselves. We also didn't have as much communication and electronics to have input on our lives. Our influences were our families and neighbors. Not a bunch of social media telling us that manual labor is not for us. Sadly skilled trade requires labor which is why many have no interest


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## slownsteady

It's not that any guy couldn't learn the jobs that video guy did. It's that he only had a one week commitment. Obviously, he didn't blow into town, find a boss who would hire him cold.....for a week. (And who was taping him while he was working??)


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## zannej

slownsteady said:


> It's not that any guy couldn't learn the jobs that video guy did. It's that he only had a one week commitment. Obviously, he didn't blow into town, find a boss who would hire him cold.....for a week. (And who was taping him while he was working??)


Yeah, they will do things for television that they wouldn't normally do. Like when Extreme Couponers came to my town and paid one of the stores to be in a segment. They made a big show of doubling the coupons and such (that store has never doubled coupons before and never has after). But the store got paid so much $ for participating that they were able to renovate and replace the old stinking (and I mean literally stinking) meat cases in the meat department. It was a vast improvement.

That said, I do think that a lot of people aren't willing to put in the work, and part of that is because they never learned how and don't know what to do. They aren't learning at home and they aren't learning in school.

But there is also the factor that there are more people now and not as many jobs to go around.


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## buffalo

slownsteady said:


> It's not that any guy couldn't learn the jobs that video guy did. It's that he only had a one week commitment. Obviously, he didn't blow into town, find a boss who would hire him cold.....for a week. (And who was taping him while he was working??)



Not even that , if you can't surf your not going to get hired to be an instructor.  You can learn and get get over time and then have a chance at the job . Same thing with the circus stilts guy . Those are just the 2 off the top of my head , but most of those jobs required a skill . 

That's the problem , people  just expect a "living wage " without getting into somthing entry level and working thier way up , in some cases needing an education first . 

They want to flip burgers and cry thier not paid enough.


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## Chris

buffalo said:


> Not even that , if you can't surf your not going to get hired to be an instructor.  You can learn and get get over time and then have a chance at the job . Same thing with the circus stilts guy . Those are just the 2 off the top of my head , but most of those jobs required a skill .
> 
> That's the problem , people  just expect a "living wage " without getting into somthing entry level and working thier way up , in some cases needing an education first .
> 
> They want to flip burgers and cry thier not paid enough.



That's brings up another thing about the new youth. Now remember I am only 37 so I am still young myself. I live a life of save to pay for what you need and only finance a purchase like a home or car and when you do don't spend more than you can easily afford and do what you can to pay off early. Every young person is out there financing TV, dinners out, new cell phones couple times a year and anything else they might want. I do everything possible to not pay an interest on anything, why are we making the banks rich when we can just wait a little longer and have the same item for nearly half the cost.


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## oldognewtrick

I agree Chris, we just changed banks and the manager couldn't believe we didn't want a credit card. Haven't had one in over 20 years, everything we buy we pay cash or use our debit card. If we can't pay for it, we don't need it. Just bought a car and paid cash, replaced wife's car  of 14 years, didn't need one just wanted one and didn't pay interest.


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## slownsteady

Up till now, I was commenting on that video and noting that this guy was not a good example. But the larger point, and I'm sure you saw this coming, is that you're painting with an awful wide brush (again!). My two daughters would argue with you if they were here. They work hard and are moving up in their careers, as are thousands (hundreds of thousands?) young people who you just don't notice because they are so normal. Or they are your kids, or your neighbors kids, so they must have been raised right.
So exactly who are you talking about?


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## Chris

The majority. There are still a lot of kids that do it right and have been raised with good morals and values. I am talking about the ones I interact with and see in my day to day life. Things may be different where you are. I have hired at least 30-40 people under 30 over the last couple years and not one of them had any work eithic.  They apply well and can talk the talk but when it comes time to deliver there is nothing.


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## buffalo

I'm talking about the people I see demenstrating for 15$ minimum wage . 2 years ago I was working downtown on a large new build so we had to walk blocks for parking . We passed a Wendy's (burger joint ) and the workers were picketing for just that . 

I'm not sure what the percentage is . I'd guess it's not the majority but idk...

I also don't think it's an age thing . I see 40 yr olds doing the same . If you work at Walmart , your going too make a low wage (in most cases) . You have the ability to peruse a higher paying job . The union trades here take you and and give you free school . It's not easy work , my guess is that's why people choose somthing else . But you start around 12$ an hour , in a short time your investing in a pension , heath insurance and other benefits . In most trades,  after 5 years your well over 30/hr .


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## bud16415

He said he had 4000-5000 rejections in getting the 50 jobs. I remember seeing this on the news and once he got started Im sure people hired him because he was news worthy and they wanted to be part of his book etc. plus the logistics of doing this in 50 weeks things had to be somewhat prepared. But none the less if he used his notoriety to help get the jobs more power to him. He claims 90% of the jobs made him an offer to stay or come back. I dont know the whole story but thought it interesting. 

I do know that the dairy farm I know very well could never find or keep employees. It is perfect work for young people, hard work with chance for feeling rewarded along getting paid. The hard work part was what caused most people to leave after 4 hours. 

    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elmFyoSBTgs[/ame]


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## frodo

bud16415 said:


> I do know that the dairy farm I know very well could never find or keep employees. It is perfect work for young people, hard work with chance for feeling rewarded along getting paid. The hard work part was what caused most people to leave after 4 hours.



this is what i am talking about, they want a job but look at you as if you are crazy, when you expect them to bow up and break a sweat


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## zannej

One of my friends is dating a 19-year-old girl who works at McDonalds. Her shifts are like 2 to 3 hours and she gripes about how hard it is. Kid is so sheltered and spoiled. Kids these days are being taught to seek instant gratification and to not have to work as hard. And others are observing that hard work doesn't always pay off. I know so many people who work their asses off and have bad luck-- like my friend who was in a car accident and then had his house burn.

I do think one of the problems that people are facing is job stagnation and how some places just aren't letting people move up in the ranks. There are some businesses that will fire long-time employees so they won't have to pay higher wages when those people get seniority. It happens in all sorts of jobs-- even teaching. There was a woman who got fired over total BS 3 days before she would have qualified for retirement pay. 

The manager at the local walmart was overheard plotting to fire an employee who had been there for 20 years because she thought the employee was making too much money ($13 an hour) and she wanted to have someone she could pay less money.

I know those are isolated incidents, but sometimes there just aren't opportunities in all places. Larger cities might have more jobs, but I know that at least around here, people feel stuck.

One good thing that I hope will come with the immigration changes will be the suspension of a program that was misused to allow foreign workers to do jobs in the STEM fields at 15% of the pay that is given to US citizens. Many companies were firing longtime employees and adding insult to it by making them train their foreign replacements just so the companies could save $.


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