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How do you think the $15 Federal minimum wage increase will affect manufacturing?

I no longer own my shop Bob, nor did I have any employees anyways. Just a guy that came in to turn for me and I'd throw him money on the side.

I know a lot of places that pay their operators or shop help/shipping less than that. Also, if a person can make 15 HR at a cash register, why take the stress/health risks for making chips for only slightly more in an entry level posistion?
 
Same arguments for decades against raising it. Opened the doors to illegal immigration and abuse of the H1B visa program. Talk now is free healthcare for any immigrants.

If people can not afford to get a roof over their heads and food on the table many end up on the street. That costs a lot of money too dealing with that. Much was prevented in the past because people did ok on minimum wage.
 
Minimum wage has fallen way way behind the cost of living. And minimum wage was intended to allow you to just barely sorta get by. In the mid 90's I worked at a grocery store. Paid about $8 an hour. Hamburg was $1lb. Gas 1.25. Apartment was $400?

That store still pays $8. You have to provide your own $100 non slip shoes. Pass drug test and 100 point personality profile plus background check. and the cost of living is what 300% higher?

And a 4x8 sheet of wafer wood is $29 now.
 
IF it gets passed then it will take years for the minimum wage to reach $15 an hour as it is slowly phased in. I think the hike is hard to argue against as $300 a week before taxes is pretty low.
 
Free open trade with China and India will lower the living standard for working-class jobs no matter what the dollar amount seems to be.

Low jobs, the ones where a person can just walk in and do the drill in one day will never pay very high.

With a ton of workers on welfare, the living standard will not go higher.

Docking rich people won't raise the low job lifestyle rate.

Taxes will never be fair because the law-makers would need to pay more taxes.

$15 minimum will just drive the ten-cent coffee of the 60s to from $2 bucks to $3 bucks.

Talent and skill are the keys to higher wages and lifestyle.

Becoming ultimately fair like North Korea will just make everybody poor.
 
Its great, the boys making 15 will go to to 22.50 and the head guys will go from 45 to 90 and my shop rate can go from 100 to 250 what not to like???...Phil
 
Sure, and now the moron is going to legalize 11 million more just to create more competition for those entry level jobs.

I wish there was competition for entry level jobs paying $15/hr.

Lowest I've ever paid is $20/hr and that was essentially parts loader, bandsaw feeder and gofer.

I pay my 10 and 14 year old kids $10/hr just to sweep floors and learn stuff in my shop.
 
I could not afford to have a $15 around, I need drug free thinking minds to work with not zombie,s with cell phones waiting for quitting time...Phil
 
Becoming ultimately fair like North Korea will just make everybody poor.

Its not about being "ultimately fair". Its about not being ultimately unfair. We had a.... 90%? tax rate during the gilded age. And the rich did just fine. If you dont tax companies and the rich they park the money, give out to execs, stockholders. They do not reinvest and the companies fail (look at the us machine tool builders) It does not have any velocity as they park it offshore. Or buy commodities futures (and congressmen) and make the rest of us pay more to just live.

Its about keeping a handfull of people from owning almost all the wealth. I am not saying strip them bare, but tax them or force them to pay better so the people at the bottom have something. At some point desperate people stop asking........ Look at Russia now. The life expectancy is dropping like a rock. Look at what is happening here. Life expectancy is dropping. Why do all these people in the middle class get hooked on heroin? No future. No way to get ahead so give up. Some of you are mad that people get $12 equivalent on welfare? Why are you mad at the poor? Be mad you dont make more, or mad at the corporations who wont pay more for parts (if they ever even pay you) or they just plain leave the country and get some 5yo to run a machine and dump the toxins in the ocean we all share.

And really really bad news. A lot of the local shops try to pay 10-13 an hour with crap benefits. Harbor freight and target pay $13 with some benefits. Harbor freight even feeds employees a=on some weekends. No more employees to feed machines......

If an executive was worth what they get paid they could figure out how to pay employees better. Instead of fixing wages with every other industry across 90% of the jobs in any given area at some crap wage.

Some of you call yourselves christian.
 
For the reasons noted above, it should have little impact on manufacturing.

During the pandemic, companies were finding that they needed to pay around $15 an hour to get stable workers for grunt work, store greeters, Amazon box stuffers, and Home Depot clerks. It's not going to much affect those jobs either - they're already at or near that level.

Where it might not make sense is in low-living-cost cost rural areas and especially for kids in things like part-time and summer entry-level jobs. The details are yet to be hashed out - I'd imagine the $15 an hour is an initial bargaining position and we'll see some modifications. What's crazy is thinking that full-time workers should still be making $7.25 an hour. That might be Wilbur Ross's wet dream, but it's hard to imagine how families could thrive with that.
 
Any family thats trying to get by on minimum wage neeeds to pull their head out of there ass, turn off the xbox, Keep their damn zipper shut and spend an hour a day Reading/studying. minimum wage is for teenagers
. other wise there job will de done by a robot and good riddance.
At 15.00 i was getting nothing but drama queens and losers at, 22.00 i get to choose, still went through a couple, do to poor judgemet but it was me laying them off. Not them off to the next job with no notice. I think entertainment and resteraunts will bear the brunt of it again. When food bumped to 45.00 for 4 we quit eating out except for special accasions. But 15.00 an hour sounds good as a slogan facts be damnded. There is one business in this area that keeps trying to hire the cheapest possible, drug bustS being done in the parking lot, The people that will not pass a piss test or hung over every morning go there. the funny thing is with a 100,000.00 in upgrades and couple decent operators They could get rid of most of their low rent help. Would pay for itself in a year 2 at most.
 
One word: INFLATION

It’s telling us that the dollar isn’t worth what it used to be. The skill level required for those jobs has not increased. However those skilled workers who were happy at, say $25, are now no longer happy. They have essentially taken a pay cut. The cost of everything will rise to follow. The cost of doing business will increase accordingly.
On a global level, the dollar will weaken. Industry will continue to leave to countries with lower wages, fewer restrictions and more favorable tax structures.
But never mind all that. Uncle Biden is going to create a job for you.
 
Sure, and now the moron is going to legalize 11 million more just to create more competition for those entry level jobs.

It won't make him any more or less of an economically suicidal senile fool, "moron" being a skosh above his current health-limited level of function.
Not his fault. He didn't exactly ASK for "short life" genetics or a stroke or two.

"Inflation?"

I'm not sure I'd give a damn if their FICA contribution boosted my SSA above $11.43/hr, calculated as if on a 40-hour week.

It has taken a 30 percent hit 11 years in off the back of SSA COLA set at a bit under HALF the actual rate of inflation. And Loudoun County, VA being spend-like-a-drunken-sailor "blue" operated, taxes according.

ISTR that only my GI service plus ONE year of summer work whilst in HS was at LESS than max contribution, too?

Stats online say the average person on SSA is worse-off. And we sure as HELL paid-in out of more than whatever minimum wage was as the years went!

88 cents, right as I entered the workforce, $1.25 the "big boost" shortly thereafter.

Loaf of bread, gallon of gas, or a pack of Old Gold straights, Chesterfields, Herbert Tarryton straights or N'Orleans own notorious "Picayune" cigarette-mooch killers (literally!) - were all similarly priced - a few cents either side of a quarter.

First rental was $40/month, fridge in the hall, just outside my door, bath DOWN the hall, but I had a 2-burner stove and separate bed/TV and kitchen/dining area.

Union Scale with shift differential was around 3.46 or 3.87? I'd been on both second and third, different times. First shift was for the old guys with gobs of Seniority!

Top wage for a Machinist First or our Senior Welders, hydraulics techs, and motor rebuilders was about five bucks/hr?

PA and Ohio both paid a lot better, but cost of living was higher than West Virginia.

"Overtime" was still in vogue, and sought-after to make ends meet, as a company didn't have any higher taxes, insurance, building costs or other overheads on it - they were already calulated on a 40-hour basis.

So it wasn't really "expensive" time until it started to tire folk into higher scrap-rates or cause them to stretch-out the work. As it does.
Enter 2d, then 3rd shift operating instead.

"Affect Manufacturing?"

Not by much. That's China's wage and hour problem again, not ours.

Why else would he raise it NOW, if not to dump-the-trump-economy and encourage re-off shoring to help bail China out?

Sure going to tear-up janitorial/custodial, hotel, and food & beverage service biznesses, too.

Bad news if that's where y'all end-up when the jobs go back offshore.
 
One thing wrong with common thinking is that many think every guy with a business is rich. The truth is that many small business owners are not making a whole lot more than the employees.

The government thinks everybody can pay more wages and more taxes because the higher-ups in government with their pay, office expense money, and payola have extra money so they think everybody has the same.

it is nice but foolish thinking that raising the dollar figure will change the buying power.
Prices are based on expendable income/ extra money..and prices always just eat that up.

But yes it is a good politician ploy to say that to get more votes.

QT:[ and encourage re-off shoring to help bail China out?..and get phony jobs for family kick-backs.

Who cares if Americans are out of work as long as the government people can have so many houses that they can't even keep count.
 
How about we lower it.

I always thought I would buy an island somewhere filled with dirt poor folks and set up a factory making knock off bluejeans.
Not slaves mind you but pay- as little as I could get away with which I figure would be damn low.

And I'd be making a killing- selling my crap product into markets where folks can afford to buy them.

And where is that- its places where the entire society has an advanced enough technical and manufacturing base that they are not the lowest possible bidder in the global market.
They are producing better goods and services and really don't have the manpower to make crap products.
Everyone is making more money and every outfit in those country is stronger and more diverse due to having a captive market which is more skilled, better educated and more affluent so they can participate in the economy to a greater degree.
They are buyers in the global market and understandably carry a trade deficit which confuses some of the dimmer folks.

Thats where I live.
But my factory- I want it where folks are dirt poor and stay that way.
 
One thing wrong with common thinking is that many think every guy with a business is rich. The truth is that many small business owners are not making a whole lot more than the employees.

The government thinks everybody can pay more wages and more taxes because the higher-ups in government with their pay, office expense money, and payola have extra money so they think everybody has the same.

Nooo... it ain't the "higher-ups". That s**t starts with the LOW "GS" fedcrunt levels and long-since!

I have seen some straaaaange s**t on that score, too!

20 yer old in Army Basic training, Fort Gordon, GA, 1965.

Was NOT a spoilt brat atall. Made a damned good soldier and well-liked team player.

But here he was from a wealthy family..

...coming across the barracks with his newly issued GI "combat" boots in one hand, a can of black shoe polish in the other.

Extends the tin of polish in my direction, says:

"Sarge?" "How do you use this stuff?"

Seems his MAID had always kept nicely polished shoes in his walk-in closet and he had never even seen her do the work!

The BAD news?

All these damned "trainer" derived throw-away shoes glued together from a hundred chunks of wierdly-shaped Chicom recylables?

..., and NOBODY knows how to polish a g-damned boot THESE days! Not even a maid!

There was VALUE as to understanding life and where and how the other guy had to live ..back in the day even rich folks had to wipe their own ass!

Or CHOSE to do, out of paranoia?

There's ONE thing where self-reliance is about to come back into vogue... speaking of mistrust of Government motives and such.

:(
 








 
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