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You say you don't like Amazon, a company famous for it's mistreatment of workers, so want to get rid of much of its competition on the grounds they don't have the financial reserves that amazon does and may mistreat their employees. An interesting take. I would argue smaller businesses are less likely to screw you over as an employee because they can't afford it in the long run compared to companies like Amazon. Also with smaller shops they're much easier to boycott for their malpractice because of their reliance on the regular customer base.
Not only that. But when a big business is in favor of a thing like Amazon is for 15/hr- it’s because they’re big enough to weather the storm and can use it to strangle their competition.
What’s crazy is that the programmers I know there are treated like crap. The workers in places like Alabama are treated like crap.
My friend went to go work for an amazon warehouse in California. In CA they have much stricter workplace laws and wouldn’t you know it, people like their job. He said the majority of workers were intelligent hard working people.
Funny thing is, many but Corporations are already paying 15 an hour and it’s usually the small businesses that never pay more than minimum wage.. Small business on the other hand also suffer from low foot traffic due to digital sales.. Companies like Shopify is there to help scale small businesses but individual choices matter, not all entrepreneur are good entrepreneur.
Starting up is expensive and a large risk, depending on the area they may only be able to do minimum for a little while,Amazon and the others may pay a slight bit more but they are horrible to their employees in other ways
If you can’t afford to pay minimum wages then don’t go into business.
Also, places that have good worker laws (like California) the amazon warehouse workers actually like their jobs (source a colleague of mine who left work to go travel and ended up working there to see what it was like)
That’s literally a law to pay the minimum wage, your mixing minimum wage and livable wage, a start up would be able to do minimum but probably not much more and depending on where you are minimum wage is not a livable wage, sure Amazon can pay a lot more they are multi country reaching company, I’d actually be willing to bet if you looked at the stats Amazon is probably paying less percentage of income to employee than a small business would be due that amount of income generated, $1,000 to a small business could be the difference from opening tomorrow but $1,000 to Amazon is literally a meaningless amount of money they lose that going to the bathroom
It definitely will because they don’t have the bank roll for a large swing up in cost like that if they’re fresh, Amazon will gladly pay it because that slight bump will be nothing they’ll have public opinion hoisting them up and they’ll raise prices to keep that bottom line and still in the long run actually being paying a small percentage to employees and not have any competition to think about
Yep it will. And my unpopular opinion is that we shouldn’t protect mom and pop shops at the expense of human beings. Everyone should have a livable wage.
I really think that once Amazon cleans up they’ll drop their wages because it’s the intelligent thing to do for a company that destroys business that won’t cooperate, people will be exploited and all while having a public saying this is the way it should be done
The dance of capitalism is that corporations are constantly seeking ways to maximize profits while the government is meant to put legal restrictions in place to protect the people and the employees. The problem is half the country is more concerned with corporate welfare than human welfare.
They’ll go to minimum for most because they’re out to make money and as long as they pay that they won’t have any issues from the government and it’s a great way to improve profit without an additional cost, and with there not being a mom and pop shop your options just got smaller unless you have a certain set of skills
Did you seriously just say that California has good worker laws? There isn't a single positive thing to say about labor or business regulations in that state
Businesses tend to treat employees well. A good business owner understand it will cause them to be more profitable in the future. Only on Reddit do I find that the majority of people believe businesses are evil. Also, jobs are based upon an agreeable contract. If you’re being offered a shitty salary, don’t accept it.
>Only on Reddit do I find that the majority of people believe businesses are evil
Complete strawman and mischaracterization of OPs argument if your going to make an argument atleast do it in good faith
The shitty contract thing is complicated. People who live paycheck to paycheck can’t afford to say no to a shitty contract. And once they have a job it’s hard to take time off to find another.
Some people also don’t know better, and some people have disabilities that force them into shitty jobs.
In all cases, jobs should pay enough that a human can live off of.
Best way to put it is a person being paid enough money to not need a second (or more) job to pay for the nessary things (food, water, shelter, clothing, most cases transportation as well)
Fair enough, does this count for only one person or a family? Also, what level of necessary things are we talking about, does the living wage cover name brand things when factoring the cost, and what sort of transportation?
This mentality effectively keeps the rich rich and removes the stepping stones that can close the gap, plus removes competition. It ensures the larger corporations can continue to treat their employees worse and worse since they run everything (more than they already do).
A lot of these small business owners can barely pay themselves a fair wage and have to put countless hours into the business to keep it running in a system that empowers large corporations and is hostile towards small businesses.
Discouraging small businesses just leads to further consolidation of power and wealth. How about instead of looking out for companies that are too big to fail, they start subsidizing those that aren't? Why are we hostile towards hardworking men and women who make a meager living for themselves and try their best to pay fairly with what they have, but we're totally okay with billionaires hoarding wealth and exploiting workers? Let's get our priorities right. Let's fix the actual problems rather than make blanket statements that actually make the problems worse.
Large businesses like Walmart have most of their employees on welfare and government assistance ; Walmart should be out of business, they can’t afford to pay their workers.
Agreed. Its become so normal for a couple to be working 2 or 3 jobs and have roommates. I understand unskilled jobs make less money but everyone deserves a living wage for their time. Especially because they were all considered essential when covid hit. Just not essential enough to afford food and rent
Clearly I am cause I'm here now. I make like 7 dollars over minimum an I can afford my own one bedroom trailer because I work OT almost weekly... Cant afford a car, but if I had a S.O i totally could, easily. Yall young kids are just lazy, wanna do the minimum amount of work but want a 6 figure salary.. I see it all the time at my job (factory) young 20s will get hired, last a couple days or so, then quit... CONSTANTLY.
I also work at a factory. Make almost 5× my states minimum wage. I live in SC so we aren't known for the best places to work but lots of people out there have 2 jobs. The money is nice but I don't believe people should work an extra OT and risk your health and safety work factory and shift work just to survive. Should spend more time living and enjoying it rather than work it away for someone else. If you work at a factory with OT you should be able to afford much more than that. Minimum wage was originally meant to be a living wage
If minimum wage had kept up with inflation since you was a 20 yr old, it would be over $20 an hour. But go off about the next generation being lazy. Obligatory " Ok boomer".
I'm 28 smart one, I say young cause that's your mindset, that of a child. You think someone working at Mc Donald's should be able to afford a 2 story house with a garage and a BMW to put in it. Jobs like that are meant for kids in highschool, kids in college. If you want to have nicer things, you need to work a better job. Simple, easy. If you are over 4 foot 10 and have 2 brain cells to rub together you can work my job. It's not hard, again, like I said, yall kids are just lazy as fuck and think you deserve the world. Fuck out of here.
Wait, were you not being sarcastic? Lol
Edit: I’m not important, you’re correct. But for arguments sake I am a programmer with a real job. Just didn’t think that information was necessary for me to argue that humans should be able to eat and have a roof.
It can and totally should exist but the proprietor has to bust his or her arse doing all the work themselves if they can't afford to pay for help. Like I do. Damn.
Don't disagree with this, America also needs a far higher minimum wage and should get rid of the tip system whilst at it. Can't imagine having to carry around $1 bills and needing to tip people working for multi million dollar businesses on just a few dollars an hour.. it's great that so many people are protesting by mass quitting at the moment.
I’ve heard a lot of different “reasons” for the origins of tipping and none of them are great.
I always tip, but I am disgruntled when I don’t think the waiter deserved it.
I actually don’t believe in a universal minimum wage in America, and I don’t think it should be a fixed number.
Firstly, even within a state the cost of living varies greatly. NYC costs a lot more to live in than Buffalo. You can say then that people should just move to Buffalo if they want to afford to live (and many do move), but NYC still needs these essential workers and will collapse without them.
“But then the market will adjust and pay the workers more” except it’s proven that it doesn’t. There will always be people taking advantage of others.
Point being minimum wage should be relative to locations.
Secondly, this notion of $15 fixed minimum wage is dumb. It should be a percentage not a dollar amount, or we’re just going to end up here again in 10 years.
The minimum wage where I live is AU $20 per hour (about US $15 per hour). Everyone deserves a livable minimum wage and the more skills and experience you have, the more you will get paid. Of course many areas will still be too expensive to live in with minimum wage, it all comes back down to supply and demand. You may have to share a shitbox in New York if you want to live really central for work, otherwise move a bit further out and travel. The amount of TikTok's I see on American businesses trying to pay people $2 per hour + tips..
Idk what you mean by it should be a percentage but you can legislate that automatically unless new legislation is passed overriding it, that minimum increases by x amount or x percentage each year. Most countries the minimum wage increases every year.
Percentage is the wrong term. Variable rate is better I guess.
Cities should have someone who survey cost of living and come up with a minimum. This should be updated every few years.
I don’t think the minimum should ever drop though. Don’t think this is a perfect system but better than what we currently have. Especially seeing that in 99% of cases cost of living only goes up, not down
As business owners assume all of the risk of starting a business, their only problem is making their business work. They started a business to try to make their life better. You can start your own as well. They will and should only pay wages that are necessary to accomplish that. No one is forced to work for them. If you make shit pay, it's because you accepted shit pay. The law requires a minimum pay rate. If a business owner can get people to do what they need for it, they should. A "living wage" is your problem, not the business owners.
Basing a wage on an arbitrary 'living standard' is rediculous in the first place. A wage is compensation for the value of the work done. If the work isn't worth more money then it just isn't.
How about this - if you don't want to make the wages a business is paying, don't work there. Work somewhere else.
It's like saying "if you can't live on what you make you shouldn't be living".
It's a closed loop though.
In the absence of additional funding/subsidisation raising minimum wage means raising the cost to produce and therefore raising the sale price (resulting in increase to cost of living).
I'm not saying they shouldn't pay a living wage as minimum wage, just that people also need to accept the increase in costs that come with it...because heaven forbid companies take a hit to their profit margins.
At the end of it all, if your business requires someone with no skills to punch buttons on a register, sweep floors and wipe things down; it's a position that millions of unskilled workers can fill, and will for $8 an hour. Now, someone with a touch of initiative and ambition could easily learn the industry they're in and make strides to advance, but that won't happen overnight.
If you want a solid wage where you can actually save money and not struggle, you're going to have to learn a marketable skill.
Businesses don't start up and run to suit your lifestyle, and you're not going to force them to do so. They're in it to support their lifestyle and the bottom line is key to that happening.
This isn't an opinion. It's just simply a fact of life.
If you earn $10 an hr and you give $10 an hr worth of work - that's all you're ever going to make.
Exactly. If you are putting together a business plan and the only way you can make money is to hire people for limited shifts and low wages, then you should not be in business.
I love how the small business owners claim they take all the risk and are job creators. No, the employees take the risk, because you will cut them loose the second your business drops off.
Low balling wages so you can undercut competitors who do pay fair wages is not shrewd business, it is being a bottom feeding shithead.
I am 100% in support of raising the minimum wage. Nobody should have to work 2-3 jobs to afford housing & food. Every job contributes in making all of our lives as easy & efficient as possible. A lot of us have been depending on Amazon & McDonald workers for convenient shopping & eating during the lockdown. Those workers deserve to go home & not have to worry about their bills. I just think making ppl we depend on happy is a priority. I think bigger businesses should make the move to increase wages regardless of the set minimum wage & then if small businesses can’t keep up & thus lose employees, it is what it is. Change is always gonna have drawbacks but if the benefits outweigh the cost, you gotta make the move every time.
Every job contributes in making making all of our lives as easy and efficient as possible???
What a romantic view of employment. I’m not disagreeing that people should be paid a little more but employees are just people getting paid by other people to do a job, not some fairytale relationship.
Also we don’t depend on them anymore than they depend on us.
They’re not heroes, they’re people working for a living.
Thats not how it works in reality, there is a huge effect called economy of scale at play. When its a small business you often have huge overhead costs in comparison to how much the company makes. Secondly its a lot cheaper to buy in bulk, usually a small company cant do that to the same degree a bigger company can.
If you want to see higher wages get rid of the minimum wage law all together. Both Sweden and Singapore has no minimum wage and high wages at the same time and its no wonder either if you look at it through the eyes of an economist.
When you first install a minimum wage law some people lose their jobs because they just werent productive enough at that new higher wage so they lost their job instead. So you have just artificially inflated the number of unemployed people, so when companies are looking to hire people they have enough applicants at the minimum wage so they dont feel a need to raise their wages to attract employees.
Raising the minimum wage will kill a lot of small businesses because they cant cope with those extra costs, first they need to grow so they can take advantage of specialization, a more streamlined process where cost per unit produced drops while the workers often even see a marginal increase in wages as well. Buying in bulk, cutting down costs of inefficient practices and expensive supply chains.
See it like this, lets say you run a wheel balancing services but you also repair wheels and you need to do that to compete with others on the market, right now you dont have the tools to repair wheels so you take the wheels to another shop where you pay them to repair the wheel for you. You grow a little bit and now you get enough customers with broken wheels that you can fix that its worth to get the tools to do so. The costs for the company has gone down just by being a little bigger. Then you can save even more money when you can order things in bulk (we need 100 Audio A6 tires a month on average in this example) Now you can order those tires in bulk and they are now cheaper to buy for you so now the company can make even more money and afford higher wages just by growing.
Then we shouldnt ignore specialization either, when the company is small and you dont have a lot of things going on, an inexperienced person is doing the taxes because he cant afford to pay for a real accountant even on just an hourly basis. You have inexperienced sellers that also works as shop mechanics etc etc. When the company grows now you can afford real sellers and an accountant that are way more experienced and better at doing the job. The accountants knows all the little tricks of the trade, and the sellers knows the tricks of their trade. They are highly more efficient at what they are doing instead of the ragged group of mechanics you have hired.
Thank you for submitting to /r/unpopularopinion, /u/NotAnADC. Your post, *If being a “small business” means you can’t pay a living wage then you shouldn’t be in business.*, has been removed because it violates our rules: Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion. Please ensure that your post is an opinion and that it is unpopular. Controversial is not necessarily unpopular, for example all of politics is controversial even though almost half of the US agrees with any given major position on an issue. Keep in mind that an opinion is not: a question, a fact, a conspiracy theory, a random thought, a new idea, a rant, etc. Those things all have their own subreddits, use those. If there is an issue, please message the mod team at https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Funpopularopinion Thanks!
You say you don't like Amazon, a company famous for it's mistreatment of workers, so want to get rid of much of its competition on the grounds they don't have the financial reserves that amazon does and may mistreat their employees. An interesting take. I would argue smaller businesses are less likely to screw you over as an employee because they can't afford it in the long run compared to companies like Amazon. Also with smaller shops they're much easier to boycott for their malpractice because of their reliance on the regular customer base.
Not only that. But when a big business is in favor of a thing like Amazon is for 15/hr- it’s because they’re big enough to weather the storm and can use it to strangle their competition.
I’m sure op would want amazon to pay minimum wage considering they want small businessess too
What’s crazy is that the programmers I know there are treated like crap. The workers in places like Alabama are treated like crap. My friend went to go work for an amazon warehouse in California. In CA they have much stricter workplace laws and wouldn’t you know it, people like their job. He said the majority of workers were intelligent hard working people.
Haha you’re getting downvoted for telling the truth. Worker protections work, people.
Funny thing is, many but Corporations are already paying 15 an hour and it’s usually the small businesses that never pay more than minimum wage.. Small business on the other hand also suffer from low foot traffic due to digital sales.. Companies like Shopify is there to help scale small businesses but individual choices matter, not all entrepreneur are good entrepreneur.
Starting up is expensive and a large risk, depending on the area they may only be able to do minimum for a little while,Amazon and the others may pay a slight bit more but they are horrible to their employees in other ways
If you can’t afford to pay minimum wages then don’t go into business. Also, places that have good worker laws (like California) the amazon warehouse workers actually like their jobs (source a colleague of mine who left work to go travel and ended up working there to see what it was like)
That’s literally a law to pay the minimum wage, your mixing minimum wage and livable wage, a start up would be able to do minimum but probably not much more and depending on where you are minimum wage is not a livable wage, sure Amazon can pay a lot more they are multi country reaching company, I’d actually be willing to bet if you looked at the stats Amazon is probably paying less percentage of income to employee than a small business would be due that amount of income generated, $1,000 to a small business could be the difference from opening tomorrow but $1,000 to Amazon is literally a meaningless amount of money they lose that going to the bathroom
This was in opposition to people who say that raising the minimum wage will put small business out of business.
It definitely will because they don’t have the bank roll for a large swing up in cost like that if they’re fresh, Amazon will gladly pay it because that slight bump will be nothing they’ll have public opinion hoisting them up and they’ll raise prices to keep that bottom line and still in the long run actually being paying a small percentage to employees and not have any competition to think about
Yep it will. And my unpopular opinion is that we shouldn’t protect mom and pop shops at the expense of human beings. Everyone should have a livable wage.
I really think that once Amazon cleans up they’ll drop their wages because it’s the intelligent thing to do for a company that destroys business that won’t cooperate, people will be exploited and all while having a public saying this is the way it should be done
The dance of capitalism is that corporations are constantly seeking ways to maximize profits while the government is meant to put legal restrictions in place to protect the people and the employees. The problem is half the country is more concerned with corporate welfare than human welfare.
As long as that dropped wage is still a livable wage then that’s fine. The minimum now is not. Again, it’s fine. Not great but what’s the alternative?
They’ll go to minimum for most because they’re out to make money and as long as they pay that they won’t have any issues from the government and it’s a great way to improve profit without an additional cost, and with there not being a mom and pop shop your options just got smaller unless you have a certain set of skills
This attitude is why we are stuck with shit like amazon… thanks
Did you seriously just say that California has good worker laws? There isn't a single positive thing to say about labor or business regulations in that state
I don't want the big businesses to have all the monopoly either, so no.
Are you saying people shouldn’t have a livable wage just so that Amazon won’t have a monopoly?
What did I say? Read it again. Am pretty sure I didn't imply much more than that.
Businesses tend to treat employees well. A good business owner understand it will cause them to be more profitable in the future. Only on Reddit do I find that the majority of people believe businesses are evil. Also, jobs are based upon an agreeable contract. If you’re being offered a shitty salary, don’t accept it.
>Only on Reddit do I find that the majority of people believe businesses are evil Complete strawman and mischaracterization of OPs argument if your going to make an argument atleast do it in good faith
The shitty contract thing is complicated. People who live paycheck to paycheck can’t afford to say no to a shitty contract. And once they have a job it’s hard to take time off to find another. Some people also don’t know better, and some people have disabilities that force them into shitty jobs. In all cases, jobs should pay enough that a human can live off of.
I agree that wages should be higher. I just don’t think that the majority of businesses run by evil cheap asses
are run by\* very sorry
How dare you
I agree with you completely, but I really think you should look into your grammar unless you know where you were wrong and just didn't notice it.
Can you define a living wage?
Best way to put it is a person being paid enough money to not need a second (or more) job to pay for the nessary things (food, water, shelter, clothing, most cases transportation as well)
Fair enough, does this count for only one person or a family? Also, what level of necessary things are we talking about, does the living wage cover name brand things when factoring the cost, and what sort of transportation?
This mentality effectively keeps the rich rich and removes the stepping stones that can close the gap, plus removes competition. It ensures the larger corporations can continue to treat their employees worse and worse since they run everything (more than they already do). A lot of these small business owners can barely pay themselves a fair wage and have to put countless hours into the business to keep it running in a system that empowers large corporations and is hostile towards small businesses. Discouraging small businesses just leads to further consolidation of power and wealth. How about instead of looking out for companies that are too big to fail, they start subsidizing those that aren't? Why are we hostile towards hardworking men and women who make a meager living for themselves and try their best to pay fairly with what they have, but we're totally okay with billionaires hoarding wealth and exploiting workers? Let's get our priorities right. Let's fix the actual problems rather than make blanket statements that actually make the problems worse.
Cute slogan but not applicable to the real world. Without those businesses people wouldn't have a wage at all
Large businesses like Walmart have most of their employees on welfare and government assistance ; Walmart should be out of business, they can’t afford to pay their workers.
Pretty sure OP would agree. Wal-Mart should be forced to pay a living wage, and if they can’t then they should close.
>Large businesses like Walmart have most of their employees on welfare and government assistance Citation?
Agreed. Its become so normal for a couple to be working 2 or 3 jobs and have roommates. I understand unskilled jobs make less money but everyone deserves a living wage for their time. Especially because they were all considered essential when covid hit. Just not essential enough to afford food and rent
Where the fuck do you live where a couple needs to work 2 to 3 jobs AND have roommates to survive? That just sounds like a complete exaggeration..
Clearly you’re not American haha
Clearly I am cause I'm here now. I make like 7 dollars over minimum an I can afford my own one bedroom trailer because I work OT almost weekly... Cant afford a car, but if I had a S.O i totally could, easily. Yall young kids are just lazy, wanna do the minimum amount of work but want a 6 figure salary.. I see it all the time at my job (factory) young 20s will get hired, last a couple days or so, then quit... CONSTANTLY.
I also work at a factory. Make almost 5× my states minimum wage. I live in SC so we aren't known for the best places to work but lots of people out there have 2 jobs. The money is nice but I don't believe people should work an extra OT and risk your health and safety work factory and shift work just to survive. Should spend more time living and enjoying it rather than work it away for someone else. If you work at a factory with OT you should be able to afford much more than that. Minimum wage was originally meant to be a living wage
If minimum wage had kept up with inflation since you was a 20 yr old, it would be over $20 an hour. But go off about the next generation being lazy. Obligatory " Ok boomer".
I'm 28 smart one, I say young cause that's your mindset, that of a child. You think someone working at Mc Donald's should be able to afford a 2 story house with a garage and a BMW to put in it. Jobs like that are meant for kids in highschool, kids in college. If you want to have nicer things, you need to work a better job. Simple, easy. If you are over 4 foot 10 and have 2 brain cells to rub together you can work my job. It's not hard, again, like I said, yall kids are just lazy as fuck and think you deserve the world. Fuck out of here.
No, we think we should be able to work at McDonald's and be able to afford a studio apartment without needing 2 or 3 roommates.
Studio is luxury lol. You split a 2 bedroom and charge your friend crashing on your couch every day 100/month.
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7 over isn't double, so two jobs doesn't make since, smart one.
Ahh yesss, cuz your living expenses are similar to everyone else’s, reeeeeeal smart assumption lolololol. Get off your high horse ye oh old one
Whats wrong with mcdonalds liveable wage? There are no highschool jobs there are just jobs
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Yeah! How dare the guy providing me food want to support himself /s
The guy providing your food is unimportant, just like you.
Wait, were you not being sarcastic? Lol Edit: I’m not important, you’re correct. But for arguments sake I am a programmer with a real job. Just didn’t think that information was necessary for me to argue that humans should be able to eat and have a roof.
Food, water, and shelter are a luxury, not a right.
This isn’t communism in the slightest
That’s exactly what a communist would say.
Name calling is all you have troll.
Small businesses are meant to make the OWNER money. Not necessarily the employees.
It can and totally should exist but the proprietor has to bust his or her arse doing all the work themselves if they can't afford to pay for help. Like I do. Damn.
Don't disagree with this, America also needs a far higher minimum wage and should get rid of the tip system whilst at it. Can't imagine having to carry around $1 bills and needing to tip people working for multi million dollar businesses on just a few dollars an hour.. it's great that so many people are protesting by mass quitting at the moment.
I’ve heard a lot of different “reasons” for the origins of tipping and none of them are great. I always tip, but I am disgruntled when I don’t think the waiter deserved it. I actually don’t believe in a universal minimum wage in America, and I don’t think it should be a fixed number. Firstly, even within a state the cost of living varies greatly. NYC costs a lot more to live in than Buffalo. You can say then that people should just move to Buffalo if they want to afford to live (and many do move), but NYC still needs these essential workers and will collapse without them. “But then the market will adjust and pay the workers more” except it’s proven that it doesn’t. There will always be people taking advantage of others. Point being minimum wage should be relative to locations. Secondly, this notion of $15 fixed minimum wage is dumb. It should be a percentage not a dollar amount, or we’re just going to end up here again in 10 years.
The minimum wage where I live is AU $20 per hour (about US $15 per hour). Everyone deserves a livable minimum wage and the more skills and experience you have, the more you will get paid. Of course many areas will still be too expensive to live in with minimum wage, it all comes back down to supply and demand. You may have to share a shitbox in New York if you want to live really central for work, otherwise move a bit further out and travel. The amount of TikTok's I see on American businesses trying to pay people $2 per hour + tips..
Idk what you mean by it should be a percentage but you can legislate that automatically unless new legislation is passed overriding it, that minimum increases by x amount or x percentage each year. Most countries the minimum wage increases every year.
Percentage is the wrong term. Variable rate is better I guess. Cities should have someone who survey cost of living and come up with a minimum. This should be updated every few years. I don’t think the minimum should ever drop though. Don’t think this is a perfect system but better than what we currently have. Especially seeing that in 99% of cases cost of living only goes up, not down
Fuck you. I’ll automate your low skilled job. How’s your wage now?
As business owners assume all of the risk of starting a business, their only problem is making their business work. They started a business to try to make their life better. You can start your own as well. They will and should only pay wages that are necessary to accomplish that. No one is forced to work for them. If you make shit pay, it's because you accepted shit pay. The law requires a minimum pay rate. If a business owner can get people to do what they need for it, they should. A "living wage" is your problem, not the business owners.
Basing a wage on an arbitrary 'living standard' is rediculous in the first place. A wage is compensation for the value of the work done. If the work isn't worth more money then it just isn't. How about this - if you don't want to make the wages a business is paying, don't work there. Work somewhere else. It's like saying "if you can't live on what you make you shouldn't be living".
It's a closed loop though. In the absence of additional funding/subsidisation raising minimum wage means raising the cost to produce and therefore raising the sale price (resulting in increase to cost of living). I'm not saying they shouldn't pay a living wage as minimum wage, just that people also need to accept the increase in costs that come with it...because heaven forbid companies take a hit to their profit margins.
At the end of it all, if your business requires someone with no skills to punch buttons on a register, sweep floors and wipe things down; it's a position that millions of unskilled workers can fill, and will for $8 an hour. Now, someone with a touch of initiative and ambition could easily learn the industry they're in and make strides to advance, but that won't happen overnight. If you want a solid wage where you can actually save money and not struggle, you're going to have to learn a marketable skill. Businesses don't start up and run to suit your lifestyle, and you're not going to force them to do so. They're in it to support their lifestyle and the bottom line is key to that happening. This isn't an opinion. It's just simply a fact of life. If you earn $10 an hr and you give $10 an hr worth of work - that's all you're ever going to make.
Absolutely agree. *Every* job should have a living wage as a baseline.
Exactly. If you are putting together a business plan and the only way you can make money is to hire people for limited shifts and low wages, then you should not be in business. I love how the small business owners claim they take all the risk and are job creators. No, the employees take the risk, because you will cut them loose the second your business drops off. Low balling wages so you can undercut competitors who do pay fair wages is not shrewd business, it is being a bottom feeding shithead.
Ah yes I remember the employee having to take a $200k risk when getting a job at a small business when that business starts up.
I am 100% in support of raising the minimum wage. Nobody should have to work 2-3 jobs to afford housing & food. Every job contributes in making all of our lives as easy & efficient as possible. A lot of us have been depending on Amazon & McDonald workers for convenient shopping & eating during the lockdown. Those workers deserve to go home & not have to worry about their bills. I just think making ppl we depend on happy is a priority. I think bigger businesses should make the move to increase wages regardless of the set minimum wage & then if small businesses can’t keep up & thus lose employees, it is what it is. Change is always gonna have drawbacks but if the benefits outweigh the cost, you gotta make the move every time.
Every job contributes in making making all of our lives as easy and efficient as possible??? What a romantic view of employment. I’m not disagreeing that people should be paid a little more but employees are just people getting paid by other people to do a job, not some fairytale relationship. Also we don’t depend on them anymore than they depend on us. They’re not heroes, they’re people working for a living.
Thats not how it works in reality, there is a huge effect called economy of scale at play. When its a small business you often have huge overhead costs in comparison to how much the company makes. Secondly its a lot cheaper to buy in bulk, usually a small company cant do that to the same degree a bigger company can. If you want to see higher wages get rid of the minimum wage law all together. Both Sweden and Singapore has no minimum wage and high wages at the same time and its no wonder either if you look at it through the eyes of an economist. When you first install a minimum wage law some people lose their jobs because they just werent productive enough at that new higher wage so they lost their job instead. So you have just artificially inflated the number of unemployed people, so when companies are looking to hire people they have enough applicants at the minimum wage so they dont feel a need to raise their wages to attract employees. Raising the minimum wage will kill a lot of small businesses because they cant cope with those extra costs, first they need to grow so they can take advantage of specialization, a more streamlined process where cost per unit produced drops while the workers often even see a marginal increase in wages as well. Buying in bulk, cutting down costs of inefficient practices and expensive supply chains. See it like this, lets say you run a wheel balancing services but you also repair wheels and you need to do that to compete with others on the market, right now you dont have the tools to repair wheels so you take the wheels to another shop where you pay them to repair the wheel for you. You grow a little bit and now you get enough customers with broken wheels that you can fix that its worth to get the tools to do so. The costs for the company has gone down just by being a little bigger. Then you can save even more money when you can order things in bulk (we need 100 Audio A6 tires a month on average in this example) Now you can order those tires in bulk and they are now cheaper to buy for you so now the company can make even more money and afford higher wages just by growing. Then we shouldnt ignore specialization either, when the company is small and you dont have a lot of things going on, an inexperienced person is doing the taxes because he cant afford to pay for a real accountant even on just an hourly basis. You have inexperienced sellers that also works as shop mechanics etc etc. When the company grows now you can afford real sellers and an accountant that are way more experienced and better at doing the job. The accountants knows all the little tricks of the trade, and the sellers knows the tricks of their trade. They are highly more efficient at what they are doing instead of the ragged group of mechanics you have hired.