What we can powerfully do to lessen inequality in Massachusetts?
We all lament the growing inequality in our country.
Think about CEO pay and about all the employees of many of these companies making very low wages. It makes me sick. The Bible says “it’s easier for a camel to get through an eye of a needle, then for a rich man to get into heaven”. But on this Earth, we are still called by our faith and democratic values to work for a more just world.
We can do something about this if we can pass an increase in the minimum wage law in Massachusetts. 60 legislators sponsored legislation for this and a strong coalition of labor unions, community groups, and immigrant organizations has developed to organize for passage of the bill.
The minimum wage was last raised in 2008. If it were raised from $8 t0 $10 an hour, some 588,000 residents, 1 in 5 in Massachusetts, would get $720 million in increased wages. This would help all of us and our economy as these low wage earners would spend most of those increases wages back in our community.
The first major test of this campaign is whether we can have a good turn out to fill Gardiner Auditorium in the State House for the legislative committee hearing on the bill on Tuesday June 11 at 10:00. I would appeal to anyone who has a flexible job situation or is not working, to come to this hearing for even 1 hour. Really. Please.
Senate President Therese Muarry will testify at this hearing and its unusual when a Senate President or House Speaker testifies at a legislative hearing. We’re hopeful she will come out for a strong bill since she’s made two recent speeches about both living wages and minimum wages.
This legislation we are backing would raise the minimum wage from $8 to $11 an hour over 2+ years. It would index it to inflation so it doesn’t lose its value as it has due to lack of indexing. If the 1968 minimum wage with it’s buying power then had been indexed to inflation, it would now be at $10.60 instead of the $8 we are at now. The legislation would also seek to raise wages of tipped employees who now get only 30 % of the minimum wage and try to raise this up to 70%.
No one should work hard and be force to live in poverty as lower wage earners are forced to do. A large majority of low wage earners are women with children, not teens, not single people. We pass through a sea of low wage earners each day as we get our Dunkin Donuts coffee, our McDonald’s hamburger, our appliance at Walmart, our clothes at Marshall’s, and have our Shaw’s Supermarket purchases totaled by cashiers and bagged by baggers. Look in to their faces. It’s one thing to say, “there for the grace of God go I” and it’s another to do something together that will help us move toward the prophet Isaiah’s injunction that “no man or woman shall toil in vain”. I know anyone reading this is doing much for others already, but it helps to push ourselves to do more.
We are disappointed in many state legislators who did not fight for new revenue that could have been raised by progressive taxes for schools and human services, though some funds are passing for transportation. The legislators have a chance to do a good deed by passing this legislation for 580,000 low wage earners to get a little help. And also up for approval is the Earned Sick Time bill to help the 1 million workers who don’t have this right and its hearing is June 25.
A minimum wage, even if raised to $11, is not a living wage “good job”. That would be more like $17 an hour or $35,000 a year. But if we can raise the minimum wage, pass Earned Sick leave legislation, pass a state living wage law for jobs subsidized or having state contracts, and unionize some more places, we will move toward living wage jobs. We’re on the “Exodus” to get to the living wage jobs. We need to start marching like to the June 11 hearing. I hope it won’t take 40 years, but let’s get marching.
Please contact me with questions, if you can attend the June 11 hearing, if you can organize others to attend on June 11, and/or you want to help in other ways on this campaign.
Thanks,
Lew Finfer…I’m with Massachusetts Communities Action Network
and writing on behalf of the Coalition to Raise the Minimum Wage and Pass Earned Sick Time Legislation
(617) 470-2912
LewFinfer@gmail.com
While the intention is noble, raising the minimum wage is pseudo-economics, if the goal, in the long run, is to help the hard working people at DD’s, Walmart, Star Market, etc.
It is a disgrace that once was viewed as entry level positions, designed for young teens to cut their teeth and learn responsibility, are now being filled by moms and dads with kids. An ideal situation is to have economic growth, like the 80’s and 90’s, that lifts all boats. How do we get there?
Why is McDonalds in North Dakota paying $18 an hour and $500 signing bonuses? They unleashed their energy sector, for example.
In 1970, the #1 U.S. employer was GM. (good pay and bennies) Today, it is Walmart (meager pay and benefits). Somehow, we must change the economic structure, that puts American workers first, not global or special interest groups, who have the politicians in their hip pocket. A for instance would be the green energy special interests who received $90 billion in tax subsidies. As Jay Leno said recently, “If Obama wants to close GITMO real fast, convert it to a solar mfg plant, it will be bankrupt in a couple years.” Get the point? I would rather those monies go to the New Bedford schools and keep the teachers hired and help the poorer kids have a chance at the American Dream. (see post by greenmiles on New Bedford schools dilemma)
Many don’t want to admit it, but Obamacare is is leading to more part-time workers. Companies with 50 or more employees, will pay a penalty for every employee working over 30 hours, who does not have health insurance. So what is happening, people who use to work 38 hours, saw their hours slashed to under 30, allowing companies to avoid the fine.
“The city of Long Beach, Calif., for example, is cutting the hours of many of its 1,600 part-time workers to fewer than 27 hours per week, the Times reported, in an effort to prevent them from qualifying for company-offered health insurance”
“More than 2 million workers at large restaurant chains, retailers and a variety of other companies that employ more than 50 people across the U.S. are facing similar consequences.
Bill Dombrowski, who heads up the California Retailers Association told the Times that the cuts represent “the only way to survive economically” under the requirements under the Affordable Care Act.
Last week, the largest U.S. movie-theater chain cut the hours of many workers below 30 hours to bypass the law. In a memo to employees, the Regal Entertainment Group, blamed the decision explicitly on the policy often referred to as “Obamacare.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/companies-cut-worker-hours-avoid-obamacare-report-article-1.1333305#ixzz2UmohjaRx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/part-time-workers-obamacare_n_3210321.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/06/will-obamacare-lead-to-millions-more-part-time-workers-companies-are-still-deciding/
In your first few paragraphs you makes some reasonable points. You’re right in the sense that raising the minimum wage is only part of the solution. I agree with you that “Somehow, we must change the economic structure, that puts American workers first, not global or special interest groups, who have the politicians in their hip pocket.” Hard to disagree with such a vague and broad prescription.
Then, though, you pivot to this nonsense about how Obamacare will ruin the economy. I’ve seen others try to make this point as they throw arguments against Obamacare at the wall and see what sticks. But your argument here is just a mismash of uniformed nonsense combined with Chamber of Commerce talking points. It’s based on a lot of speculative assumptions and “economic theory” that haven’t played out in Massachusetts or the real world. Little mroe than talking points from ideological opponents of federal subsidies for health care coverage.
I’d urge those truly interested in the issue to look at this more scholarly report on the experience here in Massachusetts:
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412582-Will-Health-Reform-Lead-to-Job-Loss-Evidence-from-Massachusetts-Says-No.pdf
I pointed out an inconvenient fact about how it has slashed the working hours of the very people Democrats claim to want to help. My goodness, read the links, there’s are faces (single moms) impacted by law, and now are scrambling for other jobs to make up the difference.
To simply say it works in MA, so it must be good for the entire country, ignores the reality of how many/most states are 180 degrees different from MA, in terms of their economy, population, demographics, etc etc. MA was at 93% of its residence having insurance before Romneycare. Not a huge leap or impact on employers going from 93%-98%. Also, 10 employees is the threshold in MA, not 50 like Obamacare.
Part of the solution is to get businesses to support a single-payer system or public option, and relieve them of the responsibility of providing H/C insurance. I see you ignored my special interest exams, b/c it is a fan favorite on BMG. Budgets are a out choices, would you be okay with ending the green handouts and putting those monies toward schools like New Bedford?
Yes. I oppose all tax breaks, subsidies and other support for businesses no matter how many jobs they claim they will create and no matter whether they propose to create a “green” project or not. I am 100% in agreement with you that investments in education (and/or basic infratructure, higher education) are far better public policy than government subsidy of business interests of any kind.
Ironically (?), though, I’d add government subsidies for health insurance to that list of better ways to spend taxpayer money as well. I’m all for single-payer but also support the major aspects of Obamacare (Medicaid expansion, the inidvidual mandate, employer penalties, and government-run insurance exchanges).
For starters you raise the minimum wage. Remember it’s not just about those who will get the pay bump, though that is important. Rising wages is also stimulative overall because the direct beneficiaries of the increase will be able to spend more, thus creating demand, jobs etc. for the rest of us who will ultimately benefit indirectly from the increase.
is the ripple effect it has on other wages. There are more people who make a little more than the minimum wage than who make the minimum wage, and even more people who make a little more than that.
When the minimum wage is increased, most places of employment ultimately give a raise to their workers who they had already set above the minimum wage…. so it’s not just people earning the $8 who will get a wage increase, but the people earning $9, $10 and even $15 or $17 who will earn more in the end.
That’s where the real stimulative effect in raising the minimum wage takes effect. This is also why raising the minimum wage is a huge boon for the middle class — because when you start talking about $12 or $15 an hour, that’s who you’re starting to talk about: the middle class.
So minimum wage increases aren’t just about helping some high school kid working at the movie theater or ice cream store…. it’s about helping a mother with two kids who’s a manager at Target, the guy working the night shift at CVS because his wife has the day job and someone has to watch the kids when they get home from school, or the receptionist at the Doctor’s Office who’s trying to put her kid through college.
There are so many reasons to increase the minimum wage, and why it’s one of the best things we can possibly do as a society to get back to the point where we can know if everyone tries hard and plays by the rules, they can succeed. That hasn’t been true for a while now, but only because all of the economic growth our country has made over the past 13 years has been directed toward the very top.
Though even a public option would be costly for people. I’m for single payer.
In the short term I also would have supported a tax, dedicated to healthcare for the uninsured, on any company that cut worker hours to avoid having to provide health insurance.
This economy is sick.
Is not to grant pardons, to tax evaders like Marc Rich, which Bill Clinton did as George W. Bush began fumigating the White House in Jan, 2001. Just a coincidence, Rich’s wife, donated millions to Clinton’s library, but the pardon wasn’t bought, of course not, why even think of such a thing. Oh wait, something called logic kicked into my brain.
except insofar as you suggest that George W. Bush was in any way an improvement. He just changed the laws so the top 1% don’t NEED to evade taxes. Though they still do.
The Rich pardon, in my view, was just the last of many actions by the Clinton White House that gave the wealthy an unfair advantage and made the Democratic Party look bad. Of course, I’m one of about 10 Democrats in the country who can’t stand Bill Clinton.
You were so good up thread with making concise arguments and actually linking to evidence, and now it’s digging up dirt on the Clinton’s? Can conservatives make a policy argument without resorting to name calling or digging up unrelated issues to make their point?
I recall the applause he got at the DNC last year, I bet very few knew about this pardon. I mentioned it, not to throw a bomb, but to point out both paries are guilty on letting the rich off the hook, paying taxes. Why I suggest every voter should be unenrolled, no party affiliation.
Based on what theloquaciousliberal said above, I could vote for him or her. I wish more were like TLL.
Maybe not at the forefront of their minds, but it was a pretty big story at the time. My views on party enrollment are the exact opposite of yours. I wish everybody picked a side because ultimately we would get better politics not so driven just by the base that way.
ACA and Marc Rich discussions aside, raising the minimum wage is the minimum (pun sort of intended) we should do. There is no downside. It helps mitigate some of the inequality and poverty we’re seeing, it stimulates sluggish consumer demand, and it has the ancillary benefit (if done widely enough) of helping the longer-term Social Security outlook. Every dollar would go to someone whose entire income is below the cap.
For a century the conservative argument has been that employment will suffer, but that’s never been borne out.
Then we are just spinning our wheels. I would be afraid of job losses in that industry as employers just pay OT ( avoid extra bennies), inflationary concerns, which is the biggest tax on low income workers, and after a few years, we are back to square one, same old argument.
It’s a first step. It must be taken. A fifty-mile hike begins with the first step.
Elizabeth Warren destroyed your arguments about unemployment and inflationary concerns in a video published here a few weeks ago. She presented data — actual facts — comparing unemployment rates for areas that raised the minimum wage with those that did not. There was NO RELATIONSHIP. She similarly showed that minimum wage workers play such a small role in today’s economy that the contemplated increases cannot start an inflationary spiral.
Today’s economy has a higher risk of runaway deflation than inflation. As the top 1% sucks in an ever-greater share of the nation’s wealth, it will sooner or later force retailers to decrease prices in order to sell anything. That runaway deflation is far more devastating than the minor risk of small inflation that even the most aggressive Keynesian proposals might bring about.
It was deflation that destroyed so many lives in the Great Depression, and it is deflation that we should fear today.
And the guy said to Warren “not all restaurants are created equal”. I loved that line.
I am not against raising the minimum wage, although Warren suggesting, based on productivity gains since the 60’s, it should be $22 an hour, is living in La-La Land. Being a Harvard professor, she should know productivity of minimum wage workers is not the same as higher wage earners, and so on and so forth.
Ms. Warren cited the $22/hour figure to provide context for the contemplated increase of only $10.10 (and that phased in over three long years).
The canard that “productivity” somehow correlates to wage category is appealing and false. I invite you to provide a definition for “productivity” that is not circular (does not assume, for example, that executives are more productive than workers). Don’t forget to incorporate the role of stock options, profit shares, and similar instruments awarded to “higher wage earners” and not available to minimum-wage workers. Those provide a large portion of the compensation package at the top and have no direct relationship to productivity.
Once that definition is agreed on, we can then have a discussion about the relationship between compensation and productivity. I’ll be particularly interested to see you make your case that a CEO like Ron Johnson is one thousand seven hundred and ninety five more “productive” than a typical department store worker (and those workers are paid more than minimum wage). He must sell boatloads of lingerie and shirts every weekend.
Lest you suspect me of cherry-picking, I invite you to peruse the list of CEO compensation ratios that accompanies the article. I note that the mandated requirement to publish this information for every public company still remains unfulfilled — another example where the Obama administration is disappointingly unresponsive.
The truth is that minimum wage workers are the cannon-fodder of the class war the 1% has been waging for decades. Sadly, the slow SEC response demonstrates that the Democratic Party and the Obama administration are complicit with the GOP in that class war.
I 1000% agree with you that some CEO’s are pigs, but they will always be fat, dumb, and happy. I was comparing low pay jobs productivity gains to the next rung or two up on the salary food chain, not CEO pay. Anyway, I found this below, let me know what you think. Also, I realize we need to walk that 50 mile hike, but I want to complete the walk by the end of the day, not by the end of our lifetime. Thats why we need to go bold and long, not just one bill here, wait 2 years, run on a different issue, pass something that sounds good, then come back to the first issue again, and we end up at the starting line, and now we need to hike 60 miles. As Rodney Dangerfield would say, “Let’s go, while we are young”.
“If we’re talking about productivity gains across the entire economy, some of those gains came from higher-level skills acquired by workers. But that’s not the case for minimum-wage workers, because they are by definition unskilled. (The possession of a skill is precisely what makes it possible for a worker to command a higher wage.) For minimum-wage workers, productivity gains are the result of investment in new technology that allows businesses to get more value out of the same amount of unskilled labor. Think of a supermarket scanner versus the old system–which people over 40 can still remember–in which all prices had to be pasted manually onto grocery packaging and entered manually into a cash register by the cashier. In that old system, it took a lot more labor for the same unskilled or low-skilled worker to check out a customer.
The profits from these productivity gains went mostly to the people who created them: the businesses who adopted new technologies and the inventors and entrepreneurs who developed them. Put simply, if Senator Warren wants to know “what happened to the other $14.75,” she might start by taking a stroll around Silicon Valley. The money went (among other places) to reward the inventors of productivity-enhancing computers and software. By the same token, if we were to mandate that all productivity gains must go to unskilled workers, we would eliminate all of those profits and kill any incentive to invest in higher productivity.”
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/03/26/elizabeth_warrens_acquired_economic_stupidity_100222.html
Again, it is NOT “all productivity gains” going to “unskilled workers.” It is maintaining the ratios that existed in the 60s.
The John Galt theory. Everyone in the tech industry, apparently, is a juvenile child who will sit at home pouting, withholding their contribution if they will pocket only $1 billion instead of $2 billion or $200 billion. It was vitally important that the minimum wage was kept below its 1968 real value, lest Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg decide it just wasn’t worth the trouble of innovating. Hell, if we had a $12 minimum wage they probably wouldn’t have been able to turn that sweet deal down and they’d be flipping burgers today. The only possible solution is a return to the Gilded Age.
Her response to that guy was:
Then you say:
This is one of those sentences that sounds good, but doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Minimum wage workers, obviously, are not paid the same as higher wage workers. But keeping place with productivity gains means only that the proportions from the 60s would be maintained, rather than having a higher-income group take all the gains and then some.
Warren is not advocating raising the minimum wage to $22 at this time, but I do think she’s making a strong case that we’ve seen major erosion in poorer people’s purchasing power in the last 40 years, it’s bad for the economy, and we should be gradually moving to a minimum wage much higher than what we have now.
And yes, she asked a guy who operates full service restaurants, a McDonalds question, and she said his retort was fair.
The main point of my posts is to highlight the failure of our economy when politicians are relying on service type/starter jobs as a means to help moms and dads pay for rent, food, clothes, etc. these jobs use to be beer money for college kids. It’s hopless, I think.
Warren’s fuzzy math.
“There’s a considerable difference between what people are doing and what they’re producing—there’s only so fast you can bus a table or cook a burger,” he said.
“The productivity gains don’t match the overall economy. It’s completely inaccurate to link the minimum wage to overall productivity.”
Most minimum wage workers are employed in the service sector, rather than the computer and cell phone companies that experts say drove productivity gains in the latter half of the 20th century.
Productivity in the food service industry, a hotbed for entry-level positions, grew by only 7 percent over the last 20 years, as opposed to nearly 60 percent gains in all businesses.
http://freebeacon.com/elizabeth-warrens-fuzzy-math/
I don’t have to troll the internet for right-wing talking points. I get them home-delivered. Who gets the gain from that particular increase in productivity?
You are supremely deluded if you think this is about beer money, or school kids working summer jobs. Here’s a comment I wrote elsewhere that touches on this subject, and is why the minimum wage is so important: it has ripple effects.
But, you know what, let’s even pretend none of that is true, and that you’re complaining bitterly that these jobs used to be/should be ‘beer money’ funds for teenagers. Isn’t the fact that full-blown grown ups — people who would firmly consider themselves members of the middle class — having to get these jobs out of desperation from an absolutely catastrophic economic time period for them, a sign that the minimum wage increase is needed now more than ever? If actual families have to live off the minimum wage, we better be damned sure it’s high enough to give them a fighting chance.
You have a fantasy vision of the world where only teenagers and young twenty somethings can or should be getting low paying jobs, but all you’d have to do is go back and watch old Roseanne episodes to know that the truth is very different, and that middle class families will do anything they can to provide for their kids, taking any job.
The least we can do as a society is do the math to figure out the base pay necessary for families to get by, even if it isn’t easy, and pay them accordingly. People shouldn’t have to work 2 or 3 jobs and still be living in poverty conditions, yet that’s where we are today… and we could change that for all time by setting a LIVING wage and tying it to inflation.
Now it’s 29, but we are heading in the right direction, according to Obama. As I like to say, quoting Capt. Smith of the RMS Titanic…”The worse is over, the iceberg is behind us”.
If you read my posts entirely, I recognized far too many older, more skilled workers, are taking these jobs, it’s the eyeball test. I see it when I eat at these places. I submit, you are delusional, in thinking, you and Liz Warren will save the middle class people, since they need to take these jobs b/c Obama and Co. cannot generate enuff decent paying jobs (Hi Keystone Pipeline), by increasing the minumum wage a couple bucks an hour. Just like Obamacare hasn’t cost these very same people, precious working hours. I see everyone is on this thread, is treating that fact like it’s kryptonite.
Hey everyone, here is an extra $2 an hour, while your company cuts your working hours from 38 to 28.
The 1970s’ biggest disservice to our nation, beyond orange and brown plaid pants and olive green kitchen appliances, was planting this massive fear of inflation in the public’s mind. Inflation driven by wages rather than an external shock like the 70s oil embargo situation can be a net positive for workers. Even though they don’t like seeing their nominal raise “reduced” by rising prices, the reason the prices are rising is that their wages are rising even more. And of course inflation with which wages keep up (or that wages exceed) is a net positive for long-term debtors, like anyone with a mortgage. The real interest rate obviously goes down if there is inflation.
The real reason our policymakers are so in a lather about the prospect of inflation (which is nowhere in sight) is that it is hurts banks and creditors most.
Waiter or waitress minimum wage: $2.63.
Agricultural worker minimum wage: $1.60.
Raise those immediately. Raise ’em by a buck an hour until they reach the actual minimum wage.
States out west tend to do this — wait staff makes tips plus actual minimum wage. Will it raise the price of a coke a quarter? Yip, probably. A burger might cost a quarter more, too. I’m OK with that. Wait staff should know that they’ll be able to cover their bills with their wages.
As it is now, no waitress could go up to her manager and say “You know, I only cleared $6/hr this shift including tips, so you need to pay me the $16 difference on the day.” Not in a million years. Furthermore, their “side work” which can often exceed an hour, is also paid at the $2.63 an hour even though that work isn’t tippable.
I worked as a cook a long time ago. I made hourly wages, and could rely on my paycheck. My waitstaff couldn’t, and that’s crap. Pay them a fair wage. Raise their minimum wage.
I still do work in restaurants as does my mom. The $2.63 rate has been frozen for at least sixteen years. Massachusetts disconnected it from the minimum wage (I believe) in 1998, two years after the Feds did the same. There is also the fact that servers often do not have enough taken out of their check to pay for taxes or health insurance.
Restaurateurs claim that servers get a pay bump when prices go up, but this is false. Rather, servers can actually get the reverse as guests leave less rather than pay more in proportion to higher prices.
Finally, the question has to be come, does the $2.63 stay in place forever? Should the tipped wage remain that way 100 years from now? This needs to change and I would humbly ask the BMG community to call their senators and reps and tell them it has to change!
I’d eliminate tipping and just pay them a living wage. Restaurants that have done this have seen a marked improvement in customer service, worker retention, and happy customers. You will pay more per entree but its evened out with no tipping. I agree with critics of tipping that its an anachronistic, antiquated bygone of a more aristocratic age. The waitress is my equal and is entitled to a fair wage. I always tip, even when the service sucks, because I know I am subsidizing the wages ther employers should be paying. But originally it was to reward exceptional service like a cherry on top.
And let’s not forget, I highly doubt 100% of the tip money is reported, especially cash tips, which I tend to leave, so the waiter/waitress can just pocket.
cash tips are *assumed* by the government, even if you leave nothing!
The only time the government doesn’t make the assumption is when you leave a tip on credit or debit and they get it on paper.
You could stiff your waitress completely and the government would tax her or him on a tip they were’t left…. which makes leaving nothing even worse.
Weirdly, as I understand it, you could tip $1 on your plastic and leave the rest in cash and your waitress gets a tip she or he can keep in total, minus the $1, which would be taxed.
The gov’t assumes a particular tip level, but what is it? The waiter or waitress could have brought in a higher percentage (or a lower percentage) than the government assumption, and if higher, could report the government minimum and pocket the rest. I’m quite sure that it happens all the time.
You raise the minimum wage and reduce the tip expectation, and you’ll find fewer tax troubles.
it’s been a while since I read about the IRS’s procedures for taxing tips, and while their assumptions can vary from place to place, but I do remember it’s damn near close 15%, if not 15% on the spot… which is around the average tip.
A lot of people tip 20% nowadays, including me (and I’ll sometimes tip more), but it’s by no means universal and there are a LOT of people who routinely stiff wait staff — and there’s really nothing wait staff can do about it, so 15% is still probably around ‘average.’
Even if the IRS had a perfectly accurate system in the aggregate (a dubious proposition), a waiter or waitress who works throughout the year is going to have some bad weeks — not just slow weeks (though that would exacerbate it), but weeks in which several people stiffed them or a lot of people gave modest tips/no one gave great tips.
It may matter less in if the IRS is ‘right’ in aggregate over the course of the year if they could be very, very wrong in any given week — because being stiffed by a few tables could mean the waiter or waitress would have to save so much from the rest of their tables for taxes in that week or month that they ‘earn’ very little indeed.
It’s okay for something as large as the government to be accurate in the aggregate — but when it comes to average people, steadiness is just as important as long-term accuracy, and why stiffing a waiter is doubly bad.
Of course, we both agree on the main point: it would be far better for us to reform the system and ensure wait staff are paid a bigger base salary and to de-emphasize the importance of tips. But I’m sticking by my statement that DFW was wrong in the full sense of the word, at least for all too many waiters and waitresses at any given time — and really, that’s all that matters when waitresses and waiters can’t “stiff” their landlord or phone bill on any given month.
IMO that is intended to reward exceptional service. Like I think jconway said above I tip 15-20% because I feel I am obligated to, not because I’m enthusiastic about it. They should be neither taxed nor assumed as an excuse to waive minimum wage requirements. For simply doing their jobs, servers should be paid by their employers and if that means jacking menu prices up a bit to more accurately reflect that reality so be it.
In NYC exceptional money – do you wonder why the waiters and waitress in NYC are all middle aged or older- it’s because they have good jobs at good wages.
BTW – I always tip 20% – UNLESS the service stinks and they I don’t.
In my prior life I worked in the food service industry – it’s tough work – and frankly everyone should try it to see how hard it is.
I find a big plus on a resume (no matter what job) when hiring is someone who was a bartender or waitress or waiter.
Tips are supposed to be a reward for good service, but because the restaurant managers use the money to reduce the wages they pay their staff, the system winds up being punitive, rather than rewarding. Service workers should be paid a living wage, and not have to depend on handouts and the whims of diners.
To see just how far wrong the tipping system can go, see the story of Amy’s Baking Company, a restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ. They were on Kitchen Nightmares, and during the show, the owner says he kept all the tips. I doubt it’s the only place in the country where that happens. So it’s not even just the diners who can withhold tip money from staff; management can help themselves, too.
The government assumes a minimum of 10%, but in fact if you are audited, it gets more complicated. They will take the restaurants average overall tips (credit & cash) and expect you to pony up the difference, unless you have kept records that reflect your cash tips and also anything you’ve had to tip out (like bartenders/busser).
…is that MA law requires restaurants to make up the difference between tips and full minimum wage if such gap exists. Is that not correct?
It is averaged over a week and can lead to massive inequities if good and bad days fall on the same week. Not to mention, it does not address the problem with insufficient funds in paycheck to pay taxes & health insurance. Servers received no minimum wage until the 1960’s, so there is a reason locked in history as to why Congress thought it necessary for tipped employees receive a percentage of the minimum wage. I actually do not think the full minimum wage is necessary because I think the system benefits both sides, but the tipped wage cannot be frozen at some increasingly irrelevant figure forever. That benefits management as the expense of the servers.
I would like to write a letter in support.
Increasing the minimum wage to at least $10 and setting it to inflation would do a whole lot to help this state.
Interesting article – which presents lots of views
The higher the minimum wage goes – the more likely I’m to hire a skilled worker at a higher rate and take less of a chance on a worker with no experience. Oh and don’t forget – it cost me $6.00/hr for health insurance per employee.
And then of course sometimes I’m bidding on public work – so when my base wages go up – I lose the job to someone from another state with a lower wage.
The only staff at my firm making minimum wage are high school students (or I should say were – they are too busy now to take a part time job – it interferes with their college resume building).
There is a secondary effect – collective bargaining agreements are sometimes based on a multiple of the minimum wage – so now we raise costs to local state and federal government agencies.
From when I was 15 until I was 19 – I worked minimum wage jobs (with raises when I stayed somewhere) – with a higher minimum wage I’m not sure those jobs would exist.
But no good ones, I see.
Don’t try to pass off something as even handed when it’s titled “The Minimum Wage Typifies Much That Is Wrong With Washington,” or comes from an op-ed (not an article) published in Forbes by someone from the Cato Institute!
The rest of what you wrote (and him) is mostly filled with specious or fallacious arguments.
The author’s final comment sums up my feeling;
At least the burden should be shared. The Earned Income Tax Credit makes all taxpayers pay. The EITC is expensive and suffers from widespread fraud. Nevertheless, noted Washington Post columnist Charles Lane, it is more appropriate to promote poverty relief “through a transparent tax-code subsidy that falls on the public as a whole—rather than the minimum wage, which works like an invisible tax businesses passed along to workers and consumers.”
to describe how baffling your comments are.
“Noted Washington Post columnist?” Who even talks like that? Are you trying to convince me with facts, or make it sound as if your position is more valid because you used a word that is supposed to convey importance or prestige? Regardless, the fact that you claim Mr. Lane is “noted” is immaterial.
As Shania Twain would say, what do you think, you’re Elvis or something?
You know what actually conveys importance or prestige? Making good arguments, and you haven’t actually made any here — just regurgitated Cato Institute talking points, as well Fox News Contributor Charles Lane, which you quote without attribution and may even be Cato Institute Talking Points forward to a DLCer.
Now, what’s wrong with the regurgitated semi-arguments you’ve quoted others as making (can we call them arguments if they’re statements that haven’t been defended?)?
For starters, they all ignore the fact that almost all the truly academic research (read: not Cato “Institute”) on the minimum wage has shown that it does wonders for both the working poor and middle class, resulting in real boosts to income in households that go far beyond just minimum wage earners, because there’s a ripple effect of raises that go up the ladder, not to mention more stable working environments for lower-wage workers.
The studies have also demonstrated that the concerns over inflation or rising costs or jobs being shifted to other states are completely manufactured and so laughable as to be nonexistent, because 1) the people making these wages don’t have the purchasing power to effect inflation, 2) the increased costs to offset bumps to the minimum wage would be minuscule, ie a couple pennies on a shirt at Walmart or burger at McDonalds (scroll on up for Elizabeth Warren’s math) and 3) it’s more expensive to construct new buildings, train new employees(some more on that here), etc. if a company considered moving to a state or community with a lower minimum wage than it is to stomach a modest bump to the minimum wage (example).
And, oh, by the way, is it any coincidence that pro-business groups and organizations (and yourself) are pushing for an increase to the EITC as opposed to an increase to the minimum wage because a higher EITC directly benefits businesses? I think not.
It seems to me that anyone who was truly concerned with the plight of the working poor, and not just their company’s bottom line (or the bottom line of corporations in general), would support an increase to both.
NYT – The Business of the Minimum Wage
She was the former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration.
and while your references don’t say teen employment decreases – hours may (and from an Economist from Umass – the last bastion of Marxism ? – though this economist isn’t).
“Our evidence does not support disemployment effects associated with minimum wage increases, but there still may be an effect on hours. Firms may not decrease their demand for workers, but they may decrease their demand forthe number of hours teens work. Alternatively, teens may have backward-bending supply schedules and may reduce the hours they offer after a minimum wage increase.”
And obviously at some point the increase of wages will result in higher unemployment and less hours (Econ 101)
I think a classic case is in public construction – the high prevailing wage rates – force contractors to automate as much as possible – better to have a machine do the work than a high wage low skill person.
In no way do I pay minimum wage and never have – but I find it almost impossible to add staff – the high cost of health insurance ($6.00/hour per employee my cost ) and benefits means I really need to have that person. I rather pay my staff overtime.
Just wondering – what does Senator Warren pay her interns – the answer is $0.00 – so that minimum wage = 0.00
He supports a (weak IMO) increase in the minimum wage. The intern thing – really? Ever heard of volunteering for college credit, or even just ’cause? Nobody has ever suggested that minimum wage laws should be construed to prohibit volunteering.
We’re not going to raise the minimum wage to create anything resembling a living wage because maybe, just maybe, the guy at the ice cream store would take on the 30 year old for the extra shift instead of the 16 year old? Really?
That’s to say nothing of the fact that a $2 an hour raise would offset most of those little changes in hours for your hypothetical teenage worker.
Obviously, there are going to be pros and cons to any decision, but this hypothetical ‘con’ you’ve dragged up is absurdly ridiculous.
BTW. We can add to your list of specious, fallacious or otherwise bad arguments:
Again with the trying-to-impress-me-with-a-title thing. Maybe you should double down and describe her as “Noted.” That could work. /sarcasm off
The least you could do is quote her arguments, including some evidence or basis for why she takes those positions to begin with.
Complete straw man. We’re not talking about internships (and, btw, you ASSUME she doesn’t pay her interns. You don’t know.)
Actually, that’s not obvious and nor is it taught in econ 101, except perhaps by very conservative/corporate profs who have an agenda and are willing to ignore the facts.
In fact, the UMASS prof I linked to made a very strong case that the hypothetical minimum wage increases being talked doesn’t come anywhere near close to having a noticeable effect on employment rates (he cites $9 under discussion federally as well as a hypothetical $10, which would apply to what’s being talked about in Massachusetts), and using historical evidence to back himself up.
I suppose you could stretch that out and decry the possible $100 minimum wage and how that would destroy jobs in America, but it would be another straw man. $100, $40, $20 and $15 minimum wages aren’t on the table.
The President has tried to put $9 federally on the table as something to talk about until we elect a House that could, you know, pass it. Our Senate President has put $10 on the table in Massachusetts. Neither of these figures on the table come anywhere close to possibly having a negative consequence on job figures. Your critiques should deal in reality, not straw mans.
You’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t run a Walmart, Gamestop or Dairy Queens and in fact do something that requires employees with specialized skills or educational backgrounds. Am I supposed to be impressed that you’re not paying these people minimum wage? And does that even say anything about whether or not you pay these people well, compared to the rest of their fields?
Should we get you a trophy?
Now, I laid down a very good argument in my previous reply, which you ignored, prompting my snark in this follow-up.
You laid out a position — we should favor the EITC and not the minimum wage. I refuted it, citing evidence that suggests corporations would love this idea because nearly 30% of what new money low-wage workers would ‘get’ from this would actually be shifted back to their employers.
Why support a minimum wage, which could cost them, when they can support something which reaps a 30% reward for them? Any person honestly caring about the plight of the working poor would ask “why not support both?” These are questions you decided weren’t worth answering. I wonder why?
Come back next time when you want to engage in the actual argument and try to convince me otherwise. If you have a Noted Chairman of the Cato Institute of Forbes Magazine who used to work for Presidents Obama, Clinton and Honest Abe… just skip all that Very Important People stuff and lay down their arguments. I am perfectly capable of deciding whether they are good ones on my own.
You started this thread by commenting on the background of one of my quoted authors – I gave you another one – more to your liking.
Minimum Wage Jobs & Internships
I don’t see the difference at all – and if you google warren doesn’t pay anything.
Both minimum wage jobs and internships help people get their feet in the door.
The fact that you can work as an unpaid internship for a government or non-profit, but not a “for profit” job is just wrong. Either ban both or neither.
Lets apply your quote to unpaid government interns
“Increasing intern pay has shown that it does wonders for both the working poor and middle class”
The whole of idea using the earned income credit is you target families – not upper middle class teenagers working at the local ice cream place.
You may want our youth unemployment situation to look like EU – but I I think it’s horrible and destructive to individuals – currently the Youth unemployment in the EU stood at 23.6 percent in January.
Of course Germany that doesn’t have a minimum wage and has a youth unemployment rate of 7.8% (NPR)
Germany has an hugely different approach to labor and to management and to the overall relationship betwixt and between the two: it’s not at all adversarial, like our system, and management of companies over 500 employees are mandated to have employee representation on their boards.
I would swap our system for Germany’s system in a heartbeat, but I don’t think you would… which makes it strange that you would hold up Germany in this debate just because they don’t have a set minimum wage: they do have worker representation at all levels of management and this forms a de facto wage floor.
Labor and management are both on the same side – trying to make a quality product and a good price.
In the US – its not healthy at all – it just destroys companies – the only really functionally alternative is the non-union shop – which the foreign US auto plants are good examples.
You assume in a company of 35 people there isn’t give and take between all employees – you be very wrong.
That may be true, or rather better understood, in Germany, but in the last decade of the US, where we’ve seen all major sports, (including NFL referees) some of the nations largest employers (target, walmart) and the entire state of Wisconsin riven by lockouts, strikes, and various very disruptive labor disputes, it’s in no way clear that this is understood all that well in the US.
Heck, if this were true in the US then why the hooraw, humbug, kerfuffle and, in general, strife regarding card check? If, in the US, “labor and managment are both on the same side”, they have an awful funny way of exhibiting it…
this is about as undemocratic as you can get. Sign this card or …..
Private ballots are the way to go – no question.
with today’s employers are about as undemocratic as you can get. No access to the building for organizers, captive audience for “vote no or….” assemblies, firing of pro-union employees in blatant violation of federal law. Stalin would be proud.
at least use facts: No internships have to be paid. More businesses pay their interns than at nonprofits or public internships, but they don’t have to either.
There is however widespread abuse with the internship system. They’re not supposed to be ‘you get to do all the menial work no one else wants to do and/or all the work of a regular employee for free.’ They’re supposed to be ‘we invest as much time training you and teaching you as you help us.’ It’s a widely abused system, for sure, but has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TOPIC AT HAND.
It is a straw man. If you are upset about it, go write a separate diary about it. I may even consider recommending it, because I agree — there’s abuse in the internship system. But that abuse has *nothing* to do with the proposed minimum wage increase in Massachusetts or elsewhere!
Now, unless you’re going to comment on what YOU brought up as your alternative — that we should support an increase to the EITC instead of the minimum wage — I’m done with the conversation, simply because you haven’t been an honest and faithful participant in it.
I’ve repeatedly asked for your response to my critique on that idea and you’ve been frustratingly silent. If you think it’s such a great idea, why don’t you defend it?
I may, or may not find this material highly persuasive. I also may or may not assume that the researchers found no evidence of those effects, and just put their speculations in to show that they’d thought of those possibilities.
As to construction automation, I note that the landscaping industry is also highly mechanized. Nobody uses a rake any more. Probably it’s the high wages extorted by the landscape workers unions …
Senate interns? Possibly you’ve read this WSJ editorial. If so, you may be ignoring an important part of it:
WRT your having to pay $6/hr for employee benefits, it would seem you should favor universal health care, since that would relieve you of a large part of that expense. Of course, your workers would then be more able to find other employment or even start their own businesses, so you might have to pay more to retain them …
The umass prof paper is technical and I think tentative.
If landscape wages were fixed at a high level – you would see a lot more automation. The lower bidders in public construction minimize labor costs – everything possible is fabricated off-site.
But is it fair that only the wealthy (and connected) can get these internship positions because they are unpaid. If I could bring in a unskilled person at a training wage – I would be willing to teach them- but that is not now possible. DOL violation.
BTW – the $6.00 is just health insurance not any other benefits.
You wouldn’t see a lot more automation in the landscape business, regardless of wages. There’s no place left to mechanize. If you’ve ever seen a big landscape company attack a condo complex, you’d see that they have machines to do everything. Not just mowing and leaf-collection, but transferring debris into trucks, distributing mulch from trucks into gardens, all manner of pruning, road and sidewalk cleaning – everything has a machine. What you would see if landscape wages were high would be an increase in owner-maintained properties, and an increase in the skill level of landscape workers. There’s definitely room for that.
Firstly, if raising the minimum wage induces you to hire somebody with even more skills, at an even higher salary — EXCELLENT! Frankly, that’s even better for society. One person employed in each case, but under the generous roark scenario, there’s more money paid into SSI, federal taxes, state taxes, and a higher velocity of money. If the result of increasing the minimum wage is an even higher average wage than the increase, well, yeah!
Secondly, this part doesn’t hold water:
That’s just nonsense, for a few reasons (1) the kids saving for college want as many hours as their schedule (and the law) will permit; they’re not going to beg off hours because they’re feeling flush; the kids who want spending money are happy to spend more — cars are expensive to operate these days. (2) Even if some kids started begging off hours, the percentage of teenagers [and adults!!!] looking for work and unable to find it is enormous. There’s just no shortage of supply.
P.S. It’s true, U.S. Senate internships are unpaid. I think that’s obnoxious. I think unpaid internships should be flat out illegal. That written, EWarren doesn’t set that policy by herself. christopher suggests a distinction between volunteering and internships, and I think that’s valid — but I think volunteering to do work for the government is, well, work, and should be paid.
We need another generation of trades people.
The vocational schools have gotten academically competitive – and the high schools no longer teach anything practical. It’s wrong that kids who aren’t academically strong and can’t get into voc schools are routed into 4 tier colleges – when they might be an amazing carpenter – metal worker – plumber – but they are never exposed to these professions.
If you read the NPR article back a bit in the thread – it’s a great idea.
that would make for a great diary, one that I’d recommend.
But it says nothing about the minimum wage, doesn’t address Stomv’s critique of your point and is off topic.
That’s not a terribly bad thing, per say — all of us go off on tangents at certain points — but you haven’t yet had any defense for why we should do a EITC increase but not minimum wage, or not both above and you didn’t even try to address stomv’s points just now.
When people take the effort to post thoughtful commentary or critiques on a subject you wrote about, it’s bad internet practice to completely ignore them and pick on (or at) a minute point or PS. I would love to see you comment to the substance of stomv’s post.