Funny Pic Thread VII - No swearing. No sex. No complaining. (READ FIRST POST)
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CodeRedR51
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I read the first post...
Which doesn't change the principles one jot. Also I live somewhere that does have a minimum wage and people keep on talking about why it should be raised. If you understand why it shouldn't be raised to £150/hr, you should understand why it shouldn't be raised to £15/hr - or £5/hr, or even exist.
CodeRedR51
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If you did, you wouldn't post the next sentence you posted. There is nothing inherently more right about [arbitrary value of minimum wage] compared to [other arbitrary value of minimum wage] - both increase the cost of living, unemployment and taxation. The picture posted of the self-serve McDonald's till makes that very point - when salaries for unskilled workers become too expensive, they will be replaced with machines that require no salary
Aside from the point that many people do want to work for free and I have myself in the past a number of times - it's called 'volunteering' - so "certainly not you" is about as far from the mark as it can be, what on Earth makes you think that no minimum wage equals no wages at all? Were people not paid at all before 1998 in the UK or 1938 in the USA?
Skills that are in demand command more money than those that aren't. There are far more people able to fill unskilled jobs (everyone - that being the definition of unskilled) than there are unskilled jobs, driving competition, driving wages down, keeping service costs down, keeping employer wage costs down, keeping product costs down, keeping cost of living down. Artificially setting a baseline for the wage pushes service costs up, pushing employer wage costs up*, pushing product costs up*, pushing cost of living up. When cost of living goes up, minimum wage is no longer high enough to constitute a living wage, so it gets increased and starts the cycle again. Furthermore, without the drive for competition, no-one needs get any skills that increase their chances of getting work, because unskilled grunts get paid the same as them (unless you raise salaries across the board, which is moronic), leading to stagnation amongst skilled jobs too, until you reach the point where grunts are replaced entirely and you have a huge swell of unemployed and unemployable people with zero skills. Of course, leaving these people to exist in poverty is immoral or something, so they have to be paid unemployment benefit, which comes from taxation, which comes from wages, reducing the amount of take home pay - typically amongst the people who own the business who employ the people who get minimum wage because it's okay to fine rich people for creating jobs or something, so they have to again increase prices or cut jobs...
And then the whole sorry farce starts all over again. Unfortunately, the entire system functions on people needing things and other people giving it to them - supply and demand - and short of entirely nationalising every industry, it won't matter how much regulation you put in place to protect people who are poor through working unskilled jobs because you end up either putting them out of work through making them economically unviable or raising the poverty line to match the cost of living increase which keeps them poor. Minimum wage laws harm low paid workers.
Can't help but notice the lack of funny pictures in your posts. Perhaps you'd be better off back in this thread if you don't feel like participating in this one?
*If you have 1,000 full time employees on $7.50/hr or $13,500pa full time, that's $13.5m annual wage bill. If your the rest of your costs are $5m/year and you sell $20m/year of product, you're in profit by $1.5m each year.
If minimum wage goes up to $9/hr, your salaries costs you $16.2m/year and you're losing $1.2m/year. How do you fix that? You either sack 75 employees just to break even or you put the price of your product up - either putting 75 people out of work so they're down $13,500/year rather than up $2,700/year, or increasing the cost of living for people who buy your product. If that product is in the inflation shopping basket, that's everyone.
Of course sacking 75 employees means productivity is down, so you'll probably need to do both to make up for the shortfall. Hooray for minimum wage!
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Only a mod can make a post this big and not get shot down for not being funny.If you did, you wouldn't post the next sentence you posted. There is nothing inherently more right about [arbitrary value of minimum wage] compared to [other arbitrary value of minimum wage] - both increase the cost of living, unemployment and taxation. The picture posted of the self-serve McDonald's till makes that very point - when salaries for unskilled workers become too expensive, they will be replaced with machines that require no salaryAside from the point that many people do want to work for free and I have myself in the past a number of times - it's called 'volunteering' - so "certainly not you" is about as far from the mark as it can be, what on Earth makes you think that no minimum wage equals no wages at all? Were people not paid at all before 1998 in the UK or 1938 in the USA?
Skills that are in demand command more money than those that aren't. There are far more people able to fill unskilled jobs (everyone - that being the definition of unskilled) than there are unskilled jobs, driving competition, driving wages down, keeping service costs down, keeping employer wage costs down, keeping product costs down, keeping cost of living down. Artificially setting a baseline for the wage pushes service costs up, pushing employer wage costs up*, pushing product costs up*, pushing cost of living up. When cost of living goes up, minimum wage is no longer high enough to constitute a living wage, so it gets increased and starts the cycle again. Furthermore, without the drive for competition, no-one needs get any skills that increase their chances of getting work, because unskilled grunts get paid the same as them (unless you raise salaries across the board, which is moronic), leading to stagnation amongst skilled jobs too, until you reach the point where grunts are replaced entirely and you have a huge swell of unemployed and unemployable people with zero skills. Of course, leaving these people to exist in poverty is immoral or something, so they have to be paid unemployment benefit, which comes from taxation, which comes from wages, reducing the amount of take home pay - typically amongst the people who own the business who employ the people who get minimum wage because it's okay to fine rich people for creating jobs or something, so they have to again increase prices or cut jobs...
And then the whole sorry farce starts all over again. Unfortunately, the entire system functions on people needing things and other people giving it to them - supply and demand - and short of entirely nationalising every industry, it won't matter how much regulation you put in place to protect people who are poor through working unskilled jobs because you end up either putting them out of work through making them economically unviable or raising the poverty line to match the cost of living increase which keeps them poor. Minimum wage laws harm low paid workers.
Can't help but notice the lack of funny pictures in your posts. Perhaps you'd be better off back in this thread if you don't feel like participating in this one?
*If you have 1,000 full time employees on $7.50/hr or $13,500pa full time, that's $13.5m annual wage bill. If your the rest of your costs are $5m/year and you sell $20m/year of product, you're in profit by $1.5m each year.
If minimum wage goes up to $9/hr, your salaries costs you $16.2m/year and you're losing $1.2m/year. How do you fix that? You either sack 75 employees just to break even or you put the price of your product up - either putting 75 people out of work so they're down $13,500/year rather than up $2,700/year, or increasing the cost of living for people who buy your product. If that product is in the inflation shopping basket, that's everyone.
Of course sacking 75 employees means productivity is down, so you'll probably need to do both to make up for the shortfall. Hooray for minimum wage!
Dan
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Imagine waking up to that. You'll definitely be needing those extra rolls of toilet paper.
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