By adamg on Tue., 11/10/2015 - 5:15 pm
Beth Gavin captured protesters demanding a $15 minimum hourly wage outside the Old State House this evening.
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what a disgrace!
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 5:48pm
Minimum wage should be between $10 to $10.75 an hour. $15 an hour is ridiculous and would increase the price that we pay for everything. After time many businesses that hired people for $15 would be out of business or they would have to lay off a majority of their employees causing many people to be unemployed.
$10.75?
By adamg
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 5:51pm
How did you pick that figure? Please provide citations and links.
Dontcha know?
By JCK
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:12pm
Reasonable + $4.25 = Disgrace
Based on the rent that mommy charges him
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:28pm
Because everyone has parents to live with, right?
Should the salary a business
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:36pm
Should the salary a business pays an employee take into account that employee's circumstances? Workers with children should be paid more than those without for the exact same work? A college student with loan debt should be paid more than one without?
Impressive!
By Republican
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:40pm
You are quite the mutitasker. It's amazing that you are able to be part of a protest for something that has nothing to do with you (we all know you have an extremely high wage and are almighty) and man each and every post on this blog. You are a true inspiration. Plus you went to Harvard I assume and not NU.
NU?
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:49pm
This is about living wage for people who work in all jobs, not just academic ones, dear.
But thanks for playing. Work being a four letter word to your ilk, unless you are berating your help about how unreasonable it is that they get paid for theirs! Or dare expect to live on it without a subsidy from high-rate taxpayers such as myself.
I understand it's a failing on my part but
By aging cynic
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 7:36am
smug jerks who say "thanks for playing" deserve an especially bad day in the rain.
Sadly, these students are
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 9:14am
Sadly, these students are misguided. Neither the MBTA nor its riders control the pay of adjunct professors at Northeastern. They should be bringing disruption and protest to Aoun, the president of Northeastern, who makes over $3 million dollars per year making him one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States. Google it yourself!
Public relations
By adamg
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 9:31am
You think you'd get three news helicopters, a gaggle of photographers and Dan Hausle to show up for some protest on campus about adjunct professors (and low-wage workers; it wasn't just the professors)?
Yes, you've thought this through
By JP Resident
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 7:26pm
I understand you'll ask for a citation, so I offer it first:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/buffalo-wild-wings-ceo...
Raising the minimum wage causes employers to seek automation for low skill level employment roles, thereby lowering the opportunities for entry level employment. Most low skilled employees need a minimum wage job to earn skills to cause them to move up the economic ladder. The main problem with teen employment in urban areas is the increased minimum wage requirements in those areas.
The minimum wage is supported most fervently by unions, whose members earn much more than the minimum wage. The reason for this is so they can exclude entrants to the labor market thereby protecting the (low skilled employment rackets) "jobs" they currently (extract unnecessary levels of income from) "protect".
Happy to debate this one all day!
How about
By Roman
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 10:38pm
A minimum wage scale based on age.
Something like 6 or 7 for younger children,then maybe up to 8 or 9 for later height school students, and gradually up to the full 10 or 12 or whatever the reasonable number is for a working age adult.
Then again, if we got rid of minimum wage entirely and had something like a negative income tax on the low end, the same thing would happen naturally and the burden of paying that minimum would be more spread out over the tax base instead of being concentrated on the direct employers of low wage workers and their often equally poor customers.
And I swear I'm a Republican.
sure
By bosguy22
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:36am
If you'd like to tell the high school kid who is going to college next year he doesn't deserve the same pay as the 45 year old (who is being paid an artificially inflated wage) flipping burgers next to him, go right ahead. I'm guessing he/she won't appreciate your reasoning and will go somewhere that pays him more.
And there's a key part of the problem right there
By adamg
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 9:43am
People who talk about minimum wage as a stepping stone to help teens get into the workforce don't realize/don't care that a) the minimum wage was initially enacted to protect people actually supporting their families and b) Still seem to think it's 1965, when good jobs at good wages for almost everybody were still a reality, as opposed to 2015, when you're seeing a graying of the minimum-wage workforce because, no, we no longer have an economy where that's possible, and growing numbers of middle-aged people have no choice but to compete with the teenagers for those burger-flipping jobs.
There was a time
By anon²
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 10:23am
when a floor/shift manager in fast food, retail, and service industries did provide a living wage you could raise a family on. That’s no longer the case until you get up to store manager, and even then you’re expected to put in double time.
We live in the richest country in world, in the history of all of the world. The economic output of Cali alone is the 8th largest economy.
How we structure our macro economy is a choice, and we’ve chosen to (mostly through inaction) to pay people below the poverty line and funnel the savings to the top/shareholders for short term gains. They then ship it off overseas, waiting for the moment their buddy gets voted in and lets them repatriate it without charge.
Similarly, we could choose to pay people, rebuild the middle class, and have a large population able to, you know, demand goods and services without needing taxpayer subsidies. You know, focus on healthy demand from people able to spend their money and grow wealth.
When was this magical time
By bosguy22
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 10:52am
Where a shift manager at McDonalds ( who now make about $10/hr nationwide) was able to support a family on that salary? What was the pay?
Constant wage erosion
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:11am
When I was in high school, minimum was $3.35.
That $3.35 would, scaled for increases in the cost of housing and food, be over $11 an hour now.
When I was in college, my "shit" job paid $6 an hour.
My son's "shit" job pays $9 an hour, thirty years later.
I had a number of classmates who lived in my trailer court and whose single parents made not much more than minimum, and they got by.
Well
By bosguy22
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 10:45am
What do you think the increase is in people over the age of 25 that now work for min wage vs. say, 2002 (when min wage was $5.15/hr)? if you guessed 3.4%, you're correct.
That would be age discrimination
By merlinmurph
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:20am
Really? Have you actually thought this through?
I thought people were supposed to get equal pay for equal work. Theoretically, anyway.
Better chances
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 2:40pm
for those starting out to get some job than having to compete with everyone else in that wage bracket.
Equality only goes so far. We don't let kids drive or vote. We don't even let the under 25 crowd rent cars without charging extra. And who says it's equal work? My optimistic guess is that the lower wage jobs won't be the same as the higher bracket jobs. You're not going to pay a grown man or woman 15 an hour to sit around and fetch you coffee once in a while, but you might pay a high school kid 5 or 7 or whatever an hour in the summer to do that.
Besides, we already have this thing called an internship for what are nominally salaried positions where the pay is next to nothing for kids filling those slots, and for all the bitching about it, it still happens and there are always applicants aging into that pool and aging out of it. Why not legalize and formalize something like that for hourly positions, where a uniformly high minimum for all just makes it that much harder to start out?
Cue the socialist rants about everyone deserving free money for being their own unique selves.
Well, since you asked for it
By boo_urns
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 5:09pm
You'll be happy to see one of our Founding Fathers proposed a similar idea to universal, unconditional basic income. GASP! Does that make our country SOCIALIST!? But, Thomas Paine lived even BEFORE Marx and Engels! *headsplode*
Hell, even some of those right wing, unique selves support the idea. Look for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Right-w...
I'd personally love to see something like this take off in my lifetime. The best part is that if you want to make more money, you can get yourself a job and just go ahead and do that. And that's plenty fair.
Not my comment above
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:16pm
But paying someone $10 HR already cost an employer, depending on the job more than $15 HR.
These people should be demanding that we become more competitive as a nation so businesses keep job in the US. Jobs which historically require job training and a skill set, not a microwave.
We need people to have better access to vocational training not a automatic pay raise. Because if you don't increase the value of ones labor, but increase their income the market will eventually correct itself and their purchasing power will return to where it previously was, equilibrium.
Translation
By lbb
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 8:59pm
Translation: These people should be demanding that we accelerate our race to the bottom, and that they be paid less so that the rich can profit more and nominally "keep job in the US" while in practice offshoring all their profits so they don't pay any taxes.
okay so
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 9:12pm
$10 to $11 with yearly increases. Everyone should get a raise every year or so but let's be honest could you see McDonald's paying everyone $11 or $15? Look at the outlook for Walmart with there increases over the next couple of years. The Walmart stock sank in one day and more and more people are shopping online "Amazon". These businesses would eventually replace workers with machines or have less employees with more workloads, leaving less people employed and then what happends?
Why $15 and not $10, $10.25,
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 9:17pm
Why $15 and not $10, $10.25, $10.50, or $11? Most small businesses would never survive!!!!!!!
So, you're paying the tab?
By anon²
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:44pm
So, you're cool with us all throwing out tax dollars to these businesses to keep them open and keep them supplied with cheap labor? Because that's what a lack of a living wage does. It's a government give away to private enterprise to keep labor costs low.
If someone can't afford to run a business without signing his employees up on our dime, that's a business that shouldn't be around.
I think we can afford then 20 cents more to provide a better wage and get people off the taxpayer dime. Currently, were making a choice to socialize wages and businesses, and that's not good policy.
Living wage
By Anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 7:30pm
Room in a shared apartment in a cheap neighborhood, monthly public transportation pass or a cheap car and reasonably priced food does not require $15/hour anywhere but NYC or SF assuming no student loan debt, and I highly doubt any minimum wage drones went to college. Sure, this is just surviving, but last time I checked this is cut-throat capitalist US of A, not uniformly mediocre socialist USSR - no one gets a Ritz penthouse by flipping burgers.
Side step
By anon²
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:27am
You side steped the question.
The facts are that we currently subsidize the huge gap in wages with welfare. If we did not, there would be economic and social turmoil.
This is a choice we make, low wages and high rates of welfare, or stop subsidizing low wages and force businesses to skim some of their profits and pay their damn workers.
The idea that businesses can just pass on this cost to their customers doesn't align with how economics works. That is unless they colude or wield so much market share that they price fix. And in that case, game over; since that is NOT capitalism.
Off the Gov dime?
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 7:32pm
First, it's YOUR dime. And second, the threshold for benefit qualification will unquestionably increase. And overtime will be back to suare one.
You have SEIU pushing for this in an attempt to raise their membership. We need federal tax and trade reform were quality jobs and job training is a priority. Not a short term fix.
It's very similar to our current view regarding undocumented aliens. Say we creat a short term fix and grant every person in this country illegally, legal status today. Well, the next day we now have people in this country illigally.
Instead if having to revisit this issue in 5-10 years, fix the root cause, shit education and a uncompetitive global job market.
The TPP is probably the worst peice of legislation this admin has put forth so far.
I bet if you ask every fast food worker if they'd rather keep working a BK or have the opportunity to have a career in manufacturing, they'd pick the manufacturing. Not to mention it would help every American out by raising our GDP.
But ya, lets just give people $15 to make French fries, that'll work.
So a business should pay
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 7:42pm
So a business should pay single moms more is what you are saying? Why should business or the government subsidize a lifestyle.
Starvation
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 9:32pm
Is not a lifestyle.
It sure isn't
By Indie
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:17am
Not in this country.
Poor people are also the most obese in the USA
Data for that assertion?
By adamg
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:20am
And while you're looking that up, could you also Google "food deserts" for one possible reason why some poor people might make bad food decisions?
Easy answers
By Roman
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 2:49pm
The Atlantic has a story last week that threw some cold water on that argument, Adam. Urban neighborhoods that got real food options didn't see a change in eating behaviors.
Speculate however you like on what the real answer is, but my money is on schools and culture. Hiking up someone's minimum wage won't teach them to start making better choices, even if the extra cash in their pockets might lower the actual or perceived barriers to doing so.
Real life being an exercise in limitations and money not growing on trees, if you want to redistribute wealth, out it into the schools, not into minimum wage. You can't do both, but one can help solve the other.
Would you kindly provide a link to the article you mention?
By Felicity
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:34pm
When an ailing Pittsburgh neighborhood got a supermarket after 30 years without one, people ate healthier—but for surprising reasons.
http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/11/when-a-sup...
Being a single mother is a
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 7:48am
Being a single mother is a lifestyle? Oh, like being a deadbeat dad? A single mother takes works hard to raise her children... do you have something derogatory to say about that?
Let me guess
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:26am
You are one of those people who says "why don't abused women just leave their abusers", right anontroll?
Excuse me SwrrlyGirl!! I am
By anon
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 6:04pm
Excuse me SwrrlyGirl!! I am sticking up for working mothers. Reading comprehension: check yourself. Adam, I'm begging you please post this. I am sick and tired of the hateful attacks on single mothers. Enough!
Thank you.
By ladycommentariat
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 7:48pm
We the taxpayers are already paying the price of subsidizing non-living wages. Better that these kinds of jobs pay a low but living wage than a below-poverty wage that tax payers have to then support.
We're all supporting deflated costs for these things for cheaper goods. Here's the thing: these jobs are needed: shelves need to get stocked, cash registers supervised. We have a lot of people out there who for a number of reasons and circumstances aren't interested or able to performed skilled labor. So we can either cut them a subsistence check or we can pay them a living wage for this kind of work because the living wage factory jobs that used to gap these options no longer exist for the most part. Clearly these companies are finding this work needed; they just want to shaft them to make goods cheaper, increase shareholder value AND deflate prices.
Andddd
By anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 8:01pm
What happens when the cost of goods increases? Do we just bump them up to $20/HR? The federal poverty index increased absorbing the same people who just to took out.
So again, the temporary fix becomes and issue.
Also what happens to investors when a rate of return is unsustainable, they move markets.
You're promoting a very liberal financial proposition without understanding how markets work.
GAAP != Wealth of Nations
By anon²
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 8:33am
The idea of Wealth Generation is that we grow wealth at a faster rate than price inflation. Inflation does eat into the pie, but the pie grows faster and thus there is still more.
So you either don't understand economcis or you think Capitalism is just a sham for the greediest to get theirs; and we have a major problem if that's the case.
$15 an hour would bankrupt
By Bill
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 9:17pm
$15 an hour would bankrupt small businesses,
that is why you won't see minimum wage increases in the baystate!
Like it has elsewhere?
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 11:29am
You might check on that - MA isn't the only state, and Boston isn't the only city considering this. It has already been enacted in other parts of the country.
Oh, and "protecting small business" must be why all the huge chains and corporations are fighting it. Altruism. Yes.
Why is $15 magical?
By Kaz
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 12:22pm
Would you say an increase over the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr would bankrupt a small business that relies on it being that low in order to stay open?
Because we actually have a $8/hr minimum wage here in MA. So, there must have been a huge loss of businesses when we broke free from the federal number and raised it ourselves to $8.
Oh, but I lied. We're actually at $9/hr since Jan 2015. I missed the article in January outlining all of the businesses that shuttered due to the $1/hr increase.
Well, no matter, forewarned is forearmed. When it goes up to $10/hr on 1/1/2016, we'll just have to keep an eye out for all the closures and the Globe article that details all the misery the extra $1/hr brings in 2016...or the $1/hr it goes up in 2017 to $11/hr and McDonalds finally says it's had enough and pulls completely out of the state of MA.
Or is there some magical "out of business" value between $8, $11, and $15/hr that we haven't reached yet that you're warning us about with your powers of prognosticism that seem unfettered with the finer details like...reality?
Walmart
By Anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 6:29pm
Bumped their wages a bit, look at what's been happening to their stock price. And we all know Walmart is awful and all, but that's what you clowns have in your 401k, along with a whole lot of other low profit margin companies that will go down the crapper when their labor costs go up by 25-50% wit no increase in productivity. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to see my retirement savings wiped out because a bunch of burger flippers think they're somehow worth $15/hour.
Correlation != causation
By lbb
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 9:01pm
That's not why, anon. Google "People Express". Many a corporation has created conditions that it could not itself survive when they were taken to their logical conclusions.
Google
By Anon
Tue, 11/10/2015 - 9:29pm
P/E ratio. Then take a look at your 401k fund holdings and figure out what will happen to the P of all those WMTs, YUMs, MCDs, etc when E goes down.
I don't care about this. I
By Dot net
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 12:51pm
I don't care about this. I want people to be paid living wages, regardless. Plus, my 401k fund managers are professionals and will dump these stocks at the first sign of trouble.
Lastly, you'd better diversify your portfolio if you're only invested in companies that pay mostly minimum wage. Diversification of assets and industries is the key to stability. You might even consider investing in a fund that cares about social and environmental welfare. Shocking, I know, that capitalism and justice are able to play nice with each other. Contrary to your zero sum analysis.
this is really funny
By Stevil
Thu, 11/12/2015 - 10:07pm
You really think they're that smart?
Yeah, cause I chose the funds
By Dot net
Fri, 11/13/2015 - 5:06pm
Yeah, cause I chose the funds.
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