Yes, I always speak and think for myself. Perhaps you could try it occasionally, instead of just clipping bits and pieces from left wing blog sites (or the NYT which is just as bad) where minds are made up even before facts are presented.Originally Posted by bsnub
You really don't comprehend very well do you. It is not the actual minimum wage itself that presents the problem in many cases, so much as the effect it has on the demand for higher wages all the way up the scale and the often severe effects it has on the cost of operating small business ventures. This is probably the most damaging aspect of the minimum wage, but also the most neglected.
When the economy is booming and employers are compelled to pay higher wages in order to hire anyone, there is no mechanism to limit the amount of wages employers have to pay just to get somebody to take out the trash and sweep the floor, other than supply and demand. This economic reality is accepted by people like you, ....but when the reverse happens you wish to force the same employer to pay more, even though there may be two dozen applicants willing to do the work for less....
When the economy is booming and small business is doing well with sales rising steadily they can, and do, pay higher wages....usually out of necessity. If we now force minimum wages on them and the economy is not doing well, and sales are declining along with costs of everything else rising, they can not afford the increased wages so they either fold up their tent or downsize in order to lower costs.
You always seem to forget that the great majority of employers are pretty small companies for whom wages and benefits represent a huge part of their costs, and can make the difference between staying in business or folding.
If you insist in making labor unaffordable, through arbitrary wage increases and imposed benefits, then you force them to abandon the business and lay off whatever employees they may have....or if they stay in business, force them to cut hiring more people, and find other ways to get the jobs done. That's what the smaller guys have to do....the big guys can either choose to absorb it or move operations offshore.
I've been there...done that....nothing like real life experience to counter union-hall theory and bullshit from the NYT. Not all corporations are like GE, GM or the State Government....but some of these NYT type studies and political decisions are made as if they were.
I know you and some others will never accept such explanations......but that's how things work when you live in the actual business world instead of wallowing in academic studies and Marxist theories. Carry on.....