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You still have to pay them some pennies... bah.

No, I am against exploitation and shameless profiteering especially at the expense of the taxpayer.

Fine then, let's have every company that has a gross revenue of less than a quarter million dollars a year be able to pay their staff in gruel and pond water. Who cares? But if you own a real business then you should be proper citizen and pay a living wage so the government does not have to subsidize your business.

Someone doesn't have to be mentally of physically handicapped to be unable to do more than $7.50 an hour worth of labor. The work they're doing may literally be worth only that.

If we're talking about a manufacturing process, you can assess the value of the labor very easily by identifying what they hourly output is vs the hourly labor costs. If the workers are literally producing only $7.50 worth of goods per person, and the state required I pay them $10 then I would probably look at either moving to a 3rd world country, automating the process or closing shop.

I wasn't thinking of any in particular, but if you want we could look at short order cooks...

I mean, it's pretty easy to calculate what they produce an hour in that case... there's a few ways of looking at it.

One way, take raw materials cost, subtract that from the price the food is sold at. One can argue this is the value of the labor the cook put into the food. Multiply the value by how many times you can produce that in an hour for an hourly value.

However, without a kitchen to cook in, restaurant to eat in etc, that value cannot be realized... so one should likely subtract from that value the hourly cost of rent for the business.

Then there needs to be support staff for delivering the food to the customers, seating them (if it's that fancy a place) etc... otherwise the cook needs to do it (thus reducing the number of units he can produce/hour and reducing his hourly value) ... so their hourly wage needs to be subtracted.

Etc with all administrative activities necessary to keep the business running.

When you finally get to the bottom, you could say that is the value of employing a single cook. If you have to pay him more than that/hour, you should not continue the business in that manner as the market does not value his labor enough to support him.

The cook gets a bonus and you get an extra egg in your omelet.

an extra egg will cost $4...

so, you're an enabler....

Baby, if I made you mad
for something I might have said,
Please, let's forget the past,
the future looks bright ahead,
Don't be cruel to a heart that's true....

WALMART CASHIER TODAY: Would you like to donate to the Children's Miracle Network today sir?
ME: Sure! Just round my total up to $50 even.
CASHIER: Stares blankly at my $48.24 total on the screen for 10 solid seconds then says she'll need to get a pen and paper.
ME: It's $1.76 ma'am.
CASHIER: Ooooooh.


Yep, that cashier deserves a raise in her wage, and not any further education to better herself.

I'm always curious about the "minimum requirements for money in order to live". But regardless, I'm assuming based on your statement that your rationale for the minimum wage is that everyone needs to be payed an hourly wage which is sufficient to support them. That's an easy enough answer, then you need to set the minimum wage to a value which provides an annual salary at the welfare level. If we establish anyone below that level requires gov't assistance, then that is the level at which one is paid enough to live. A good measure of that is the EITC. If someone is below the EITC level, the government will give them $$. Interestingly, for a single individual, as long as you are earning 7.50$ an hour, (15k annual) you will not qualify for EITC. If you want our national minimum wage to actually support children, then you need to set it to approximately 20$ (40k annual).

So what does that do? think of the sort of impact that will have on education.
If your lowest common denominator can earn 40k annually straight out of high school, while your average joe goes to college and spends money on tuition, what does the first 4 years look like?
Lowest common denominator: 4 years @ 40k - 160k earned
Average joe: 4 years @ -20k - (80k) lost

Just getting out of college, your average guy is a quarter million behind the absolute laziest of us in lifetime earnings. How long will it take him to catch up with our lowest common denominator? Assuming our laziest and stupidest remains so, it will only take approximately a decade before our average guy is actually starting to earn money above their investment in time/money in their education.

However, Average guy, being average may do that calculation themselves. They may say "hey, because the government is forcing companies to pay so much for completely unskilled labor, it's going to take me a decade to overcome my initial investment in education. What if I spent that time instead working, and just worked my way up the walmart chain of command. If I start at a 40k/year stockboy, maybe in 10 years I could be a 60k/year manager"... suddenly it takes longer than 10 years to overcome that deficit, the math for an education is no longer as strong.

My point is that if you narrow the income gap between skilled labor, and unskilled labor you take away the incentive to be skilled. Hell, current average income for college educated (bachelors) individuals is a paltry 43k annually. That's barely more than $20/hr. If you want to pay a stockboy who can't add the same amount, then why would I go get educated?

If you want to hedge, and say that you just want to pay them more, but not a full living wage, then you're not actually solving any problem.

So we are all better off if the uneducated live off the government teet and do little or nothing - because if we paid them a living wage it would ruin the economy?

You are quite the socialist Victor . . .

Don't recall anything about living off the teet in that post. In fact, it's time for the teet to dry up.

Is this another "I don't have anything to offer to the discussion, so I"ll shoot the messenger" responses?

And fyi, my choice would be option C... don't mandate a minimum wage and don't subsidize them. People have WAAAYYYY more than 40 hours in a week they could work, if they really wanted to eat.

Minimum Wage in Australia is 15.00 per hour, while unemploymen is 5.8 percent.

And some of the highest prices.

http://www.smh.com.au/data-point/rising-price-of-living-in-australia-20130426-2ik16.html

So what good is a higher minimum wage. A rise in the cost of living will negate the gains.

A better question is what you have against the working poor, or what Walmart does for their working poor?

And the higher cost of living will be spread throughout the whole economic spectrum, more money pumped into the whole economy.

Where did you study economic theory? This has never resulted in the poor escaping poverty. Inflation hits the poorest the worst. The more discretionary income a person has the more they are able to absorb inflation without effecting their quality of life.

Inflation in Australia in currently ay 2.9 percent.What you don't understand is that Americans made moe money per hour 25 years ago that they do now. It wasn't alright to pay people peanuts to live on. Walmart, McDonalds, and others have turned the most important return is the stock holders, not whether someone can actually work hard and make a difference for their family. The funny thing is how many are so brainwashed by big money to think this is alright. Good luck on judgement day.

Again are you saying that someone who flips burgers at McDonald's or scan groceries at Walmart should be paid the same as say a certified carpenter? If so where is the incentive for a person to educate themselves.

The whole minimum wage argument is nothing but a smoke screen to buy votes of the poor. If YOU really wanted to help people get a living wage you would be beating the drums of education.

You really need to quit quoting the Dems talking points. You've yet to make a coherent argument for raising the minimum wage. When your Australian comparison blew back at you you resorted to class warfare with CEO pay. What Walmart chooses to pay its CEO is the business of the owners of Walmart.

But, since you brought it up, let's see if it really matters. Walmart has 2.2 million workers worldwide. For 2013, it paid it's CEO $20.7M. Let's cut his pay to a dollar and use his salary to give all the Walmart workers a raise. Assuming the average Walmart employee works 1500 hours a year, we can give them a 1/2 cent an hour raise with this massive savings.

Suppose you cut the pay of all the Walmart executives to $1 a year. I doubt it would yield enough money to offer more than a $0.25 an hour raise.

I sleep just fine thank you.

Wasn't your argument for a higher minimum wage based on your desire to see people prosper?

This is the third time I've provide you information regarding the relative prosperity of the Australians.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Australia&country2=United+States

If you are really in favor of prosperity wouldn't you advocate for the increasing of one's value above the poverty level?

Though you may not believe it, I'm all for one increasing their standard of living. But, what puzzles me is the naivety you display. I can't believe you think that Walmart isn't going to raise prices in relationship to labor costs. Do you really think that is going to help the cashiers and the burger flippers?

If you expect to be able to raise a family simply by working as a cashier at Walmart or flipping burgers at McDonald's, your delusional. 25yrs ago America was producing more product, but even then you couldn't raise a family working as a cashier or flipping burgers at a drive-in diner. Not to mention there where A LOT LESS free hand-outs 25yrs ago.

The most important things is that the company remain profitable, and the return to the stockholders who took the risk to invest in the company that offers employment. Without stockholders investment there would be no company and no jobs to offer. And for that risk investors should be taxed at a lower rate than those flipping burgers who take no risk.

If you add the free programs available including education to better your skills to the minimum wage, the same as a company is required to include any further education they pay for as part of your salary, the wage is more than far. Just because many are too lazy or too "good" to work for minimum wage and not make any effort to better themselves is no reason to raise the minimum wage while those that pay the taxes to support the free programs take a pay cut. Let them hold-out for that management position with a high-school education.

Who cares what Australia does. You're in America. If you think Australia has a better system, go live there then. Bon Voyage. Have a nice flight over that Indian Ocean.