[QUOTE="newwurldmn, post: 5483633......] The reason graduation rates are low is because most of the students can’t afford to live and go to school at the same time. That’s the challenge. My wife is on the board of our local CC and on the board of a private college that is essentially a CC. It’s truly God’s work that these schools are doing and the stories she tells me about the students are as inspirational as anything you will read in the Forbes 400 list.[/QUOTE] %% Good points; except grad rates are so low because people dont study much. Or like me making a '' d '' in elemantary math once\ there were no charts in that math class to interest me . On the bright side most illegal aliens dont trust the feds, even more than most dont / so they dont do welfare much.........................................................................
I don't think anyone believes that wages are being artificially held down by some kind of employer cartel or something. The problems are elsewhere. First, with a pure supply and demand situation a very tiny oversupply gives all the power to the demand side. Imagine a theoretical relatively frictionless economy where there was a supply of 110 workers, all of whom needed a job so their families didn't live in poverty, and 100 jobs. Any time a worker tries to threaten with "I'm going to quit rather than work at this wage", the employer has 9 extra people unwillingly living in poverty who are happy to come work for them at that wage and everyone knows it. As a result, absent organized labor, which is no longer much of a force in the U.S., the employer can drive down wages pretty far compared to the situation when there were 100 workers and 100 jobs (again abstracting away friction and churn and other complexities to make the underlying point). Even worse, the impact isn't symmetrical when you have a supply shortage. The impact to a company that employed 20 of those employees and could only manage to hire 19 people is probably a reduction in profit but only by say, 1/20th, or maybe more but generally the pain is spread out over a base of some kind. On the other hand, the worker who isn't working loses 100% of their income, they're proportionally impacted far more and the pressure for them to take any deal they can get before they starve is far higher than the impact on the employer to take any employee they can get to get from 19/20 to 20/20 strength. Additionally many companies are in a far better financial position to outlast employee demands than individuals are. If you are a 18 year old who just joined the workforce after your parents kicked you to the curb you don't have access to credit or savings to hold out for any period of time without a job. Most companies will have the cash or access to credit to go for quite a while moderately understaffed. Many could go indefinitely, they just wouldn't have as high a profit as they wanted. Again obviously things like unemployment insurance ameliorate this somewhat, but inherently the low, unskilled end of the employment spectrum is an asymmetric environment where employers have more power than employees. Not to say I disagree at all that education is key, although I personally believe we should focus far more on the trades than college (have you tried to hire an electrician in the last 10 years!). I just think there's a vast group of people who are essentially trapped in a position where they can't do anything but work two jobs to care for their families without assistance. The impact of putting our finger on the supply and demand curve to set a minimum wage has historically had little or even positive impact on unemployment while greatly helping these individuals, and the company's that employ them all seem to do just fine as well. It seems like decent policy while we work to enact more structural changes?
Dems are now trying to bring back the full deduction for state and local taxes, which is going to need to be paid for by some other tax hike.
I employ hundreds of people in this wage class and its the other way around. From 2012 to 2017, wages didn't go up a lot but they couldn't go down. In 2017 and now in 2021 they have risen dramatically up. The reason is that when you pay a new person $2/hour more, you have to pay everyone $2/hour more. When you pay a new person $1/hour less than everyone, you don't have to change anyone else's pay. Further, in practice that guy figures out fast that he's getting paid less than everyone and makes a stink. You can't pay a person less than they earned last year except in some unique circumstances. There is a stickiness on the downside and an elasticity on the upside. Our starting wage in some locations went from $12 to $18. It will never go back. Either i can pass the costs on, or i will find a more radical solution. Right now, customers are okay with passing the costs on. But no matter what, the wage will not go down to $12 ever again unless i fire the entire plant and rehire a totally new set of people but that is an unrealistic solution. Most community colleges have robust trade programs (along with non-trade programs). As far as the working poor is concerned, it's not that hard to earn $25-30/hour. A machinist (which is a non-guilded skill) can earn that with 12-15 months of on the job training.
No it doesn't. The tax revenue will be made up by increased economic activity. We've learned this in the last 4 years.
So from 2012 to 2017, did a single minimum wage employee leaving the company have the same impact on the overall finances of your company as the impact of leaving had on the finances of that single employee? That's the crux of the asymmetry I'm referring to, not if you had the ability to reduce pay which I completely agree is nearly impossible to do. During that time period, I don't think it was legitimate to say that the power dynamic was equal between employers and low wage employees such that everything was an accurate reflection of actual supply and demand. I would agree that right now the equation has flipped pretty dramatically to the side of demand exceeding supply. And you're right, that due to the difficulty in reducing wages, any increases you make now will probably have to remain frozen until inflation catches up. I would say that's an exceptional circumstance we probably haven't before seen since well before our lifetimes? But I'm still not sure it's an argument against a minimum wage. If employers are already paying well above minimum wage and don't see a viable way to reduce wages, then they would be indifferent to it's existence wouldn't they? You are right about trades at CC, our CC is finally moving back in that direction after a detour into deciding that only things with the word "cyber" in them would exist in the future. I would like to see high schools do a better job of pushing trades as both a lucrative and honorable profession. I feel like my kid's (public) school at least kind of acts like you either go to college or you're a loser, which is a shame on a bunch of levels.
Wait a minute here... You employ hundreds of people. Why did your employee wages go up? What was the reason for that?
Nobody lives in the kind of shit we see in America. Cardboard houses and and 1970s pick up trucks. Food banks that cause traffic jams the demand is so massive. The world sees what America hides