Minimum wage increases are countered in costs

OH OH! :( I did visit your profile, I thought you were probably busy! I hope you get well soon. Try to get some rest!

Thanking you, I don't want to concern anyone too much but it might be man flu!!!!!

Okay!

The problem with minimum wage is it doesn't matter how much you increase it by employers will increase product or service costs to match. This hits the consumer and effectively the worker too. There shouldn't be a minimum wage for a person there should be a maximum profit you can earn as a business. Take 100% of all running costs and salaries to produce a product and you can charge 100% of that amount as profit. This would encourage businesses to pay employees more as they would be able to earn equivalent profits of what they pay their workers

Minimum wage shouldn't be a living wage though. Kids flipping hamburgers in 10th grade don't need a livable wage. There's a systemic problem that's exemplified with how far the gap from CEOs to the average employee has skyrocketed over the last few decades.

I think lobbyists are part of the main issue, but I don't know how you get them out of the picture. I also think Super PACs are part of that same equation.

I think the biggest thing is figuring out how to get as much money removed from the political picture as possible, but what politician is going to vote for that?

Sorry to disagree with you on this one, but minimum wage was originally set up to provide the minimum living wage. This becomes more imperitive as economic downturns occur and the only jobs available to the masses are minimum wage jobs.

In a perfect world, everyone would make the median wage, so they could afford to buy a home, raise a family, have a car, pay their utilities and put food on the table. Maybe even have a little left over for investment and savings.

But this isn't a perfect world. Those who benefit the most from our tax laws do not put near as much back into our economy as they could. Meanwhile, price fluctuations are such that the extra pound of hamburger a family can buy this month has to pay for something else next month.

No, the solution is worse: price controls including an earnings ceiling. Max compensation. Worse than socialism or communism.

I don't feel like we fully disagree here. I'm not against the living wage and don't envision millions of entitled workers.

It should still be a performance based pay. The lowest paid should not working to survive though it takes away the drive. At the same time jobs need to be desirable. You can have a similar income to somebody working 32 hours at a McDonalds on welfare and not have to commit to a work schedule.

I was recently humbled when I looked more into whose actually paying taxes, however much they may be manipulating tax codes they pay what is required of them.

I've got an old fashioned work ethic. I've taken minimum wage jobs when I couldn't find anything else. During those times, I was able to keep the family afloat. Today, it's just me, and I draw disability. Jobs that I can do,and am qualified to do are a no go. I'm "overqualified". Fast food? Under qualified, but not due to lack of knowledge, but due to physical skills.

I still have to agree with FDR, though. If a job is worth doing, any job, it's worth being paid a liveable wage. If that's unattainable for a business owner, then perhaps the job is unnecessary. This includes jobs that require some skill, even at the entry level.

Try running the business without that position. See what happens.

The more you know. I didn't realize that's what minimum wage was put in place for. If that's the case the current labor issues are suddenly more important that I believed.

Businessmen want you to believe it's the lowest wage that they are allowed to pay an employee. They want people to forget the why, and discount those that know and remember.

Great points, the CEO has a tidy salary but the big money bonuses are determined by profits. These need capping.

The money in politics is wrong. Wrong like profits from healthcare. I wouldn't know where to start we have no idea of the extent of big businesses input on policies I'd bet it's worse than we're speculating

I like your original idea as far keeping prices low on pharma, etc, I just don't see how you could set a profit cap. I'd love to see an true economist's take on how that could be done, and what they think the pros and cons would be.

The profit cap would be determined by how much it costs to make the product, how much you pay your workers, the amount invested in workers pensions etc the higher this amount is the higher profit you will be entitled to. There is no reason for this extortion other than greed

I absolutely agree with you about greed, but the flip side of greed is that it often leads to innovations because they can spend so much on R&D. I think if you cut CEO & C Suite pay along with corporate lobbying they'd save themselves 10s of millions of dollars, and hopefully put money in the hands of those doing the actual work and research. I'd like to think that would encourage them to pay their workers more so they could acquire and retain the best workers, but I doubt that would be the case.

I wonder what it would look like if that were combined your profit proposal.

Thank you

Tackling the greed and amount of money in the hands of a few could not be an overhaul it would need to be more of a gentle cleanse. An approach you could only implement at the roots of a business.

Let's say we created a group in your community or city. The aim would be to gather 10,000 people. Once you have the members you could have a membership fee of $2/week in 12 months we have $1,040,000 enough to buy a local poultry farm.

Once the business is purchased you have 10,000 owners at 0.01% no shareholders with dividend payouts and no fat cat individual owner removing the profits at the top (this is the most important part) For every year of the business the profits are not removed they stay in the business and can be reinvested in lower product cost, workers pension funds and better pay for workers.The structure within the business does not need to change the performance pay is still a factor positions come with higher pay.

With this being a local business owned by 10,000 local people we know where these people are buying their poultry from. After 2 years you purchase a dairy farm and keep buying until your local group puts bread, milk and meat on the table at an affordable cost with workers taken care of.

This doesn't become a restricted group of 10,000 people as the group grows input and time will determine the ownership percentage which at the end of the day becomes irrelevant. This could keep going with the knowledge that everyone we'd need to buy a business from is infected with the same individual greed and they all have a price.

Interesting idea indeed.