McDonalds.....Don't Eat the Food!

[Soundguy]

If you want to call the money I earn at my job "the math" that's fine with me. Raising the minimum wage will do financial harm to me. And I'm fairly certain it will harm most of the folks here on TBN, too. I earn average wages. My wife earns average wages. Yet somehow we've managed to pay all of our bills, raise some children and live debt free for most of our adult lives. If someone asks me to give up an additional $3K to $5k of my wages each year to fund an increase in minimum wage, that will put a serious dent in our finances. That's the math.

that's straight brass tacks and hard to argue with.

I know where i work. profit is a hard thing to chase.. if expenses go up ( payroll).. profit goes down... if there is no more profit.. and bottom end pay goes up.. where does it come from? all other pay? cheaper toilet paper ( already there. )

 

[MossRoad]

One more thing.... these are part-time jobs with NO insurance benefits. 40 hours used to be considered full time. Soon, it will be 28 hours and you have to offer benefits as an employer. So what are most employers doing? Cutting their part-time workers to 25 hours, just to make sure they won't go over 28. So, many of these folks will work two part time jobs if they can find them. Lets say they find 40 hours of work X $15 X 52 weeks = $31,200 per year for flipping burgers. That's not only wrong, its insulting to everyone else who's worked for 15-20 years to get their wages up to that amount. Their wages won't be increased and their buying power will be decreased. Raising the minimum wage to $15 will effectively kill the lower middle class, bringing them down to the level of high school dropout wages.

 

[dave1949]

that's straight brass tacks and hard to argue with.

I know where i work. profit is a hard thing to chase.. if expenses go up ( payroll).. profit goes down... if there is no more profit.. and bottom end pay goes up.. where does it come from? all other pay? cheaper toilet paper ( already there. )

It's only hard to argue with if one is denial about the true cost of poverty resulting from low wages.

If someone wants to believe they pay nothing for social services, medicaid support for low-income families and seniors, earned income tax credits, Section-8 subsidized housing, food stamps, reduced price or free school lunches, jails and prisons, law enforcement going to the same low-income homes over and over, a court system to process the offenders, probation officers, methadone clinics, home heating assistance, and on and on, they are kidding themselves.

Those are items we could easily put a dollar amount on. Poverty also has intangible costs that are difficult to price. It impacts the quality of life for anyone near it, in fact people spend money to get away from it. Public school quality is much more difficult to achieve in low income areas--no matter how many tax dollars are thrown at them. Poor schools create more poverty. Vandalism and theft make public services more expensive or given up on, along with insurance and loan rates higher and credit scores lower by zip code.

These social ills have a very high correlation to poverty that we spend lots of money on trying to control or alleviate. That money comes out of our pockets. And that's also the math.

 

[Soundguy]

i never said that social services has no dollar cost.. I see the dollar cost every paycheck...

 

[sld]

Everyone agrees there is a problem. Raising minimum wage to try and solve the problem is not the answer.

The job / pay problem is fundamental and needs something other than a knee jerk reaction to fix it. The knee jerk fix will just move the problem or the pain somewhere else.

Removing the minimum wage may surprise a few people with the results.

 

[dave1949]

i never said that social services has no dollar cost.. I see the dollar cost every paycheck...

I know you didn't.

 

[Alan L.]

Sausage and Egg McMuffins, hash browns, fries, and the fish sandwiches are pretty good. In my opinion everything else on the menu is inedible garbage. Dry and tasteless burgers, worst I have ever eaten.

 

[smstonypoint]

Dry and tasteless burgers, worst I have ever eaten.

You have never had a Krystal Burger?

Steve

 

[ddb123]

I've been letting this roll around in my head for awhile.

I can't think of an example where altruism is practiced for it own sake. Maybe someone else has an example.

All of the actions that I considered for pure altruism or selflessness have some sort of reason behind them that implies a reward.

Empathy, an emotion that develops at an early age in "normal" people, causes us to perform acts which could be altruistic but at the same time rewards our empathy impulse. The world would be a barbaric place without empathy. Sociopaths are said to lack empathy when compared to normal people. Some psychologists believe they can profile children at an early age for sociopathic tendencies by observing a lack of empathy. Self-preservation is served by practicing empathy.

I recently was offered $100 for a ruined chainsaw. The person wanted the engine, which still ran, for a micro-go kart. The engine had five years of use and it was not worth $100. It was a spur of the moment thing, not a planned sale. He had a $100 bill and two $20's in his wallet. I accepted the two $20's. I would say I did that because taking the $100 would be in conflict with my self image as being an honest person, not because I wished to be altruistic. I rewarded myself.

Desiring that people earn a living wage is definitely not altruistic on my part. I know what comes with poverty: domestic violence, substance abuse, unwed mothers, low education attainment, unemployment, crime and incarceration, welfare support, and if pervasive enough, an unhealthy society where people are afraid of many things.

I have empathy for people caught in that situation, but I can also count the resulting cost in dollars, and the threat it poses to me and mine. Self preservation. I cannot ignore the absurdity of picking up some self-protection ammo, and a $3.21 breakfast, on the way to work. Those two things are not unrelated. I'm not picking on MossRoad, it's just a metaphor for the situation we find ourselves in.

All in all, from the things I have considered, thinking one is practicing altruism or selflessness would be an illusion.

I didn't necessarily expect a reply, but I appreciate you giving such an honest and thoughtful one. The quote you provided stood out to me from your previous statements because, until that point -- and since -- you have couched your argument in terms I can appreciate: rational self interest. It seems to me that all actions are fundamentally guided either by some type of incentive or some type of force. I think most of us exclude actions taken under duress from the moral conversation. That means that moral questions pertain only to actions taken with some type of incentive in mind. You already stated so (rather eloquently) in your final sentence. This would seem to fly in the face of the quote you provided earlier, however.

I'm still searching for a coherent moral philosophy, however, so I reserve the right to recant my preceding statements

 

[tthopskin@yahoo.ca]

its the same with any of that sh#t ...a little wont heart you .. too much will kill you .. a man can eat arsenic and live . to much will kill you ...same as booze i drink a little i feel good ... i drink to much it almost kills me ..lol moderation