461–470 of 1001 posts
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One concern is that this makes teenage employees relatively more attractive and so increases the adult unemployment rate above what it would be with a uniform minimum wage.
Is this a big issue in Australia?
This article unfortunately doesn't address the business side of the problem. Fast food restaurants, or place like "Dale's" mentioned in the article, make very little profit. It is most likely below 10%. Here is an estimate: https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profi... . A 10% profit is very modest. That's not the story of the "fat cats getting rich on the back of the workers" that the article is al…
What about franchise fees? Independent fast food restaurants basically don’t exist in the U.S. anymore. An individual McDonalds may be scraping the boundary of profitability, but corporate had a net income of $1.5B last quarter[0], or about $7,500 per employee per quarter [1]. That’s net income, not revenue. [0] https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/gwscorp/assets/i... [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/cha…
There are no such things as “jobs americans won’t do”. It’s just you have to compensate people accordingly. With this failing stealth UBI experiment that we are currently engaged in, people aren’t willing to work when many of them are getting near 100% the same income not to work. The rest of us are being crushed by inflation.
Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults? In australia we have a $12.50/hr minimum for 15 year olds. It climbs in increments until about $25/hr. This system allows teenagers to get a foot in the door for low-skilled jobs, and allows adults to get paid a livable wage. The result is that a lot of fast food jobs are performed b…
That incentivizes companies to hire teenagers instead of adults
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Yeah, I worked in hospitality my entire 20s in a major American city, only ONCE did I work with an actual HS teenager and that was at a middle-brow Mexican place and his family knew the owners, and he only worked weekends. Great kid though. Also, most places serve alcohol and teens can't serve.
>Also, most places serve alcohol and teens can't serve. Considering how profitable alcohol is, I wonder if that regulation isn't a major factor in hiring under 21s.
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I think the effects of price stickiness (on goods and labor) aren’t being adequately considered in these discussions. Yes, these restaurants could raise their wages to compete with unemployment, and many have. They’ll also need to raise their prices, which they have leeway to do, because everyone is facing the same costs. The problem occurs in a few months when the bonus unemployment runs out. Then there will be mill…
Rising the minimum wage is exactly the thing that should not be done, if one cares about the employment levels. It prices out the least qualified workforce of the market. To put it simply the less able/educated/experienced are not productive enough to cover own costs. So that no one wants to employ them and they are stuck. They start to rely on the government to provide them with resources and it means that have to v…
Raising the minimum wage is unlikely to affect employment much because of just how profitable companies are today
Mind you I think a better tslternative to a specific minimum wage is to have a guaranteed government job at a specific wage. That sets a bar that all labourers have an option, while some lower paying jobs can still exist if they're otherwise competitive in other experiences
Honest question: why do discussions about minimum wage in the U.S. never propose having teenagers having a different minimum to adults? In australia we have a $12.50/hr minimum for 15 year olds. It climbs in increments until about $25/hr. This system allows teenagers to get a foot in the door for low-skilled jobs, and allows adults to get paid a livable wage. The result is that a lot of fast food jobs are performed b…
Paying poverty wages is wrong, and child labour is wrong. They don't cancel each other out.
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https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-older-88-percen... 88 percent of people making the federal minimum wage are older than 20. A third are older than 40. Median age is 31. More than half work full time.
You have a good point, and I appreciate the evenhanded approach. I'm still far from sold that "poverty wage" is a useful term if we want to have a healthy discussion. It leaves too much nuance out.
There are obviously a lot of factors that go into the decision making process of whether you should take a particular job at a particular wage. But at least two are 1) how much you're getting otherwise from other sources, and 2) competition from other sources of labor. For 2, consider this: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/special-reports/l... New entries in Q4 2020 down 78% from the year before, and that's…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-workers-older-88-percen... 88 percent of people making the federal minimum wage are older than 20. A third are older than 40. Median age is 31. More than half work full time.
You have a good point, and I appreciate the evenhanded approach. I'm still far from sold that "poverty wage" is a useful term if we want to have a healthy discussion. It leaves too much nuance out.