Federal Minimum Wage

Greed is taking things just so no one else can have it. I can tell you the more I make the more I spend. It has nothing to do with me not wanting to pay Federal Income tax.  

The BEST definition for "GREED" should have a picture of EVERY politician in our government together beside of it. And imo,the ones that are againdt raising the minimum wage. You are as just as greedy as any of the of the politicians,because you are afraid it might take a penny away from you and your lifestyle,not having any consideration for the ones that are struggling working that minimum wage job rather than be on welfare. 

bbf-falcon wrote:The BEST definition for "GREED" should have a picture of EVERY politician in our government together beside of it. And imo,the ones that are againdt raising the minimum wage. You are as just as greedy as any of the of the politicians,because you are afraid it might take a penny away from you and your lifestyle,not having any consideration for the ones that are struggling working that minimum wage job rather than be on welfare. 

Government telling business' how much to pay their employees creates more struggling than letting it work itself out. If their wasn't a set standard, more people might have better wages and benefits. The only person that should dictate a hourly wage is the person that has the risk of success or failure in the endeavor of proprietorship. Welfare should not be enough to survive on, that way more people are out in the workforce, making more money, growing the economy. Minimum wage standards do not grow the economy, it only stifles it.

I remember when high school students and colledge students where about the only ones working at minimun wage, and that was mainly part time work, retail, fastfood, ect. This was in a good economy by the way. In these type jobs I agree raising the miminum wage will hurt them. It will also impact full times jobs to, but not as hard I think. The outsourcing of our manufacturing, to foreign countries, which some use virtually slave labor, at the expense of American worker's, strike's me as greedy. Also under the table import labor seems to fit the same profile. Another problem I see is alot of American youth don't like manual labor, because they feel it is beneath them, making it hard to find worker's legally, and the competition uses illegal labor, so you can't make a profit, and stay in business. Does anybody remember what year the Federal minimum wage law was enacted? I think I can guess which party sponorsed it. With ACA going into effect in 2014, if we combined that with a large increase in minimum wage, does anyone think this will help our weak economy? If so how? Curt your point about the ecomony working itself out, is well taken, as long as everyone plays by the rules. If the min. wage is raised and a person's job is eliminated, how does that help them? What if inflation takes the money out of their pocket in less than a year, and the next minimum wage increase is in 5 years? It is very unfortunate so many people are having to try and survive off minimum wage jobs, while so many people in high places seem hell bent on trying to destroy or economy, and middle class way of life.

Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?  

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions, you'd be rich at $5/hr

Every worker deserves to make a decent, livable wage. IMO $15 an hour is way to high for an unskilled worker. $10 an hour ($20,800 a year based on a 40 hour week) seems fair to start and the employer should have to pay cost of living increases and modest pay increases based on an employees performance (8 hours work for 8 hours pay). At that rate an employee shouldn't receive $600 a month in food stamps which we taxpayers pay. Working conditions should be favorable and an employees rep should be appointed to make sure of this. I saw on the news that some walmart stores have bins set up for customers to donate food to the employees who can't get by on their paycheck alone     .
Granted there are a lot of young people who are 'afraid' of an honest days work, I guess that's the 'norm' nowadays. An outsourcing has really hurt our economy. But the people who are willing to work should be able to make enough money to survive:!: 

GT300TD wrote: I saw on the news that some walmart stores have bins set up for customers to donate food to the employees who can't get by on their paycheck alone     .

Walmart can't offer every employee a full time job, and some of those working part time jobs are doing so because they have a back bone. Walmart understands their position and offers to collect items for help. I would rather 30% of my income go to them, than those that are sleeping in till noon or later and hanging out on the front porch waiting for the USPS to bring them a check.

I commend Walmart for recognizing these hard working Americans. Walmart also knows that if we weren't a bunch of cheap bastards, they wouldn't need to fill the shelves with cheap shit made in China.

And some of the workers are forced by walmart to work parttime so 'chinamart' won't have to pay full time benefits. walmart is the largest company of it's type in the world and have long time been known for it's mistreatment of it's employees. No walmart shouldn't be commended, but rather condemned for the way they treat their employees. The ONLY way they deserve to be commended is if they would spread some of their billion dollar earnings to the ones that earn it for them.

At the risk of blowing this thread up...Playing devil's advocate.....

Getting back to the greed...
Part of the big corps. problem is.. they answer to the stockholders,and they want PROFITS..
Why?? because it means they (the stockholders) get paid !!


Just a reminder... Let's keep it civil in here !!!

GT300TD wrote: And some of the workers are forced by walmart to work parttime so 'chinamart' won't have to pay full time benefits. walmart is the largest company of it's type in the world and have long time been known for it's mistreatment of it's employees. No walmart shouldn't be commended, but rather condemned for the way they treat their employees. The ONLY way they deserve to be commended is if they would spread some of their billion dollar earnings to the ones that earn it for them.

There are only a few types of people that don't like the way Walmart employees are treated,

1) unions,

2) Media,

3) Government.

Walmart has no obligation to work outside of their business plan. Walmart offers more benefits to their part time workers than any other American owned company. If you agree to work for $8/hr, it doesn't matter how much the company makes. Would you feel the same for companies that are loosing money since the hire of minimum wage employees?

I understand that a lot of you guys don't understand how business' operate, but just because you're making millions or billions, doesn't mean that you have large profit margins. Walmart operates on a < 4% profit margin. Do you want to try and do that?

QtrWarrior wrote:At the risk of blowing this thread up...Playing devil's advocate.....

Getting back to the greed...
Part of the big corps. problem is.. they answer to the stockholders,and they want PROFITS..
Why?? because it means they (the stockholders) get paid !!


Just a reminder... Let's keep it civil in here !!!

Socialism is the only business plan where shareholders don't care about profit.

Curt wrote:

QtrWarrior wrote:At the risk of blowing this thread up...Playing devil's advocate.....

Getting back to the greed...
Part of the big corps. problem is.. they answer to the stockholders,and they want PROFITS..
Why?? because it means they (the stockholders) get paid !!


Just a reminder... Let's keep it civil in here !!!

Socialism is the only business plan where shareholders don't care about profit.

Exactly Curt, and it seems that is where some people want us to go...

QtrWarrior wrote:

Curt wrote:

QtrWarrior wrote:At the risk of blowing this thread up...Playing devil's advocate.....

Getting back to the greed...
Part of the big corps. problem is.. they answer to the stockholders,and they want PROFITS..
Why?? because it means they (the stockholders) get paid !!


Just a reminder... Let's keep it civil in here !!!

Socialism is the only business plan where shareholders don't care about profit.

Exactly Curt, and it seems that is where some people want us to go...

And that is why I am passionate about voicing the truth. Look how many guys on here don't understand were we are headed. People who love America have been quiet way to long.

Curt wrote:Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?  

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions. You'd be rich at $5/hr

15 or 50 dollars, doubt it will matter, price of goods and services will go up proportially, value of the dollar will decrease to match. Government and Unions are part of the problem, no doubt, but not all of it. Used to believe the same, but think the problem is alot bigger, and more complicated now. The whole business model is totally screwed up, and everthing that used to work for the better of our country seems a$$ backwards from what it used to be. Not only is the system messed up, so or alot of the people running it. We had government and unions in the 1950's, (was there a minimun wage then?) and the economy was good, could it be something else (or many things) have changed. GM and Dodge, took a government bail out, Ford did not, all three had union and government involement, so what's up with that?

Curt wrote:

GT300TD wrote: And some of the workers are forced by walmart to work parttime so 'chinamart' won't have to pay full time benefits. walmart is the largest company of it's type in the world and have long time been known for it's mistreatment of it's employees. No walmart shouldn't be commended, but rather condemned for the way they treat their employees. The ONLY way they deserve to be commended is if they would spread some of their billion dollar earnings to the ones that earn it for them.

There are only a few types of people that don't like the way Walmart employees are treated,

1) unions,

2) Media,

3) Government.

Walmart has no obligation to work outside of their business plan. Walmart offers more benefits to their part time workers than any other American owned company. If you agree to work for $8/hr, it doesn't matter how much the company makes. Would you feel the same for companies that are loosing money since the hire of minimum wage employees?  

I understand that a lot of you guys don't understand how business' operate, but just because you're making millions or billions, doesn't mean that you have large profit margins. Walmart operates on a  < 4% profit margin.  Do you want to try and do that?

I went to a walmart a couple of years ago in January about 11pm, cold outside. Was talking to one of the checkout ladies and she said she wish she would have brought a warmer coat. I made a comment like, yea sometimes it takes a while for the car to warm up. She said no it's not that, they turn the heat off at midnight and turn it back on at 6 and I don't get off til 5.

Curt wrote:

QtrWarrior wrote:At the risk of blowing this thread up...Playing devil's advocate.....

Getting back to the greed...
Part of the big corps. problem is.. they answer to the stockholders,and they want PROFITS..
Why?? because it means they (the stockholders) get paid !!


Just a reminder... Let's keep it civil in here !!!

Socialism is the only business plan where shareholders don't care about profit.

Almost Curt. Socialism only care's until they acheive their final goal of Comunism, then they don't care anymore. The government owns everthing then. Social , and Comune, look up the definition. For the good of society, for the good of the comune, is how it is sold to the masses. America was founded on individual rights and liberty for the individual. They are tottally oppisite princiables, and or not compatiable. We also have something unique, a middle class. Once that is gone, you only have two classes. What has been done lately to grow middle class America?

GT300TD wrote:
I went to a walmart a couple of years ago in January about 11pm, cold outside. Was talking to one of the checkout ladies and she said she wish she would have brought a warmer coat. I made a comment like, yea sometimes it takes a while for the car to warm up. She said no it's not that, they turn the heat off at midnight and turn it back on at 6 and I don't get off til 5.

Was it Walmart turning it off, was it required by the city, was it requested by the utility company during brown outs, did you go back in after midnight to see what the temperature was? Was she disgruntled because she's a complainer that didn't get the promotion she had applied for?

What you're saying doesn't make good business sense. You're acting like it was a dig at the employees, I'd say it's a good way to run customers off at night. They stay open 24 hours for a reason. It's not so they can employee minimum wage people and freeze them out.

QtrWarrior wrote:At the risk of blowing this thread up...Playing devil's advocate.....

Getting back to the greed...
Part of the big corps. problem is.. they answer to the stockholders,and they want PROFITS..
Why?? because it means they (the stockholders) get paid !!


Just a reminder... Let's keep it civil in here !!!

                                                                                                                                        Good observation. One thing that has changed in the not to distant past is most company pension funds are gone, at least the way they were before. 401K union and non union alike are heavly invested in the stock market, which had to be bailed out by the government, short for us the taxpayers. All of this is tied to world markets and global trade way more than it used to be. Something to think about.

supervel45 wrote:                                                                                                                                     Almost Curt. Socialism only care's until they acheive their final goal of Comunism, then they don't care anymore. The government owns everthing then. Social , and Comune, look up the definition. For the good of society, for the good of the comune, is how it is sold to the masses. America was founded on individual rights and liberty for the individual. They are tottally oppisite princiables, and or not compatiable. We also have something unique, a middle class. Once that is gone, you only have two classes. What has been done lately to grow middle class America?

Well, you almost see the whole picture, so I'm going to open it up around the boundaries. The progressives are against complete government control. But they want to make sure that there are only 2 classes. Them and us. There is a reason that the top 1% has gained 31% of our wealth, it's because it was done by plan. Why do you think that its not against the law for anyone in congress to perform insider trading? Why do you think they place themselves higher than us and think that they can make us by a product that they are invested in? Why do you think they push flu shots? Do you have any idea where or who the share holders are, and wonder why you cant buy any of the stock in the largest company that sells the vaccine? Why do you think our government spends $85 billion dollars a month propping up the stock market? If you had insider information, you would know the exact minute that the stock was going to collapse and sell off before you were beat with a huge loss. There are to many hands in the cookie jar, and to many guns in the country to move toward communism. Letting the water come to a slow boil will allow them to slowly make it look like a natural disaster while they eat lobster and caviar.

Curt wrote:

GT300TD wrote:
I went to a walmart a couple of years ago in January about 11pm, cold outside. Was talking to one of the checkout ladies and she said she wish she would have brought a warmer coat. I made a comment like, yea sometimes it takes a while for the car to warm up. She said no it's not that, they turn the heat off at midnight and turn it back on at 6 and I don't get off til 5.

Was it Walmart turning it off, was it required by the city, was it requested by the utility company during brown outs, did you go back in after midnight to see what the temperature was? Was she disgruntled because she's a complainer that didn't get the promotion she had applied for?

What you're saying doesn't make good business sense. You're acting like it was a dig at the employees, I'd say it's a good way to run customers off at night. They stay open 24 hours for a reason. It's not so they can employee minimum wage people and freeze them out.

By they, she meant walmart. LOOK CURT I'm just telling you what she told me. Do you have stock in walmart or something??? I don't know where you've been but walmart has been known for how bad they have treated their employees. A couple of years ago HBO did a special of this very thing, I take it you missed that special?!!

Curt wrote:

GT300TD wrote:
I went to a walmart a couple of years ago in January about 11pm, cold outside. Was talking to one of the checkout ladies and she said she wish she would have brought a warmer coat. I made a comment like, yea sometimes it takes a while for the car to warm up. She said no it's not that, they turn the heat off at midnight and turn it back on at 6 and I don't get off til 5.

Was it Walmart turning it off, was it required by the city, was it requested by the utility company during brown outs, did you go back in after midnight to see what the temperature was? Was she disgruntled because she's a complainer that didn't get the promotion she had applied for?

What you're saying doesn't make good business sense. You're acting like it was a dig at the employees, I'd say it's a good way to run customers off at night. They stay open 24 hours for a reason. It's not so they can employee minimum wage people and freeze them out.

Might be able to help you on this one since I am in the HVAC/control's industry. Walmart has their heat, air and lights, most likely tied into a regional or national control system, company. Manager may or may not have temperature control options, or may have to call corporate or the controls company for zone adjustment. The managers of the store usually due have energy costs taken out of the profit margin, with this type system. Burlington Coat Factory, chains did at least, I was told. Also had many problem's with hot cold zones, due to malfunctions. If it is not a common problem to many stores, it may not be management in this case. You can bet Walmart keeps an eye on the light bill very closely though, all large retain chains due.

supervel45 wrote:

Curt wrote:

GT300TD wrote:
I went to a walmart a couple of years ago in January about 11pm, cold outside. Was talking to one of the checkout ladies and she said she wish she would have brought a warmer coat. I made a comment like, yea sometimes it takes a while for the car to warm up. She said no it's not that, they turn the heat off at midnight and turn it back on at 6 and I don't get off til 5.

Was it Walmart turning it off, was it required by the city, was it requested by the utility company during brown outs, did you go back in after midnight to see what the temperature was? Was she disgruntled because she's a complainer that didn't get the promotion she had applied for?

What you're saying doesn't make good business sense. You're acting like it was a dig at the employees, I'd say it's a good way to run customers off at night. They stay open 24 hours for a reason. It's not so they can employee minimum wage people and freeze them out.

                                                                                                                                        Might be able to help you on this one since I am in the HVAC/control's industry. Walmart has their heat, air and lights, most likely tied into a regional or national control system, company. Manager may or may not have temperature control options, or may have to call corporate or the controls company for zone adjustment. The managers of the store usually due have energy costs taken out of the profit margin, with this type system. Burlington Coat Factory, chains did at least, I was told. Also had many problem's with hot cold zones, due to malfunctions. If it is not a common problem to many stores, it may not be management in this case. You can bet Walmart keeps an eye on the light bill very closely though, all large retain chains due.

Thanks for that explanation. The woman said it was turned off every night from midnight to 6 am.
It seemed to me like this was a pretty poor way for a billion dollar retail chain to treat their employees, no matter how few there were working during those hours.

Curt wrote:Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?  

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions, you'd be rich at $5/hr

Unions only make up 11% of the work force .............. That puts a lot of fellows on this board in the other 89% which excepts no blame for whats going on?   Go ahead and strip the workers like the elected members of the Government did in Wisconsin........ now who we got to blame ?

Getting really tired of seeing the union card being played ............ We got a saying around here, there are three kind of people , Union, Non-Union and Anti-Union. I work with as many good non-union guys as I do union guys on a daily basis. I have no problem with them as they are no different than I am and they have no problem with me either. I am gonna go out on a limb and say your probably in the third group based on the comments.

I'll leave it at that.

TravisRice wrote:

Curt wrote:Let's raise the minimum wage to $50/hr. What is that going to do?  

If we got the government and the unions out of business decisions, you'd be rich at $5/hr

Unions only make up 11% of the work force .............. That puts a lot of fellows on this board in the other 89% which excepts no blame for whats going on?    Go ahead and strip the workers like the elected members of the Government did in Wisconsin........ now who we got to blame ?

Getting really tired of seeing the union card being played  ............ We got a saying around here,  there are three kind of people , Union, Non-Union and Anti-Union. I work with as many good non-union guys as I do union guys on a daily basis. I have no problem with them as they are no different than I am and they have no problem with me either. I am gonna go out on a limb and say your probably in the third group based on the comments.

I'll leave it at that.

Very well worded!

GT300TD wrote: And some of the workers are forced by walmart to work parttime so 'chinamart' won't have to pay full time benefits. walmart is the largest company of it's type in the world and have long time been known for it's mistreatment of it's employees. No walmart shouldn't be commended, but rather condemned for the way they treat their employees. The ONLY way they deserve to be commended is if they would spread some of their billion dollar earnings to the ones that earn it for them.

                                                                                                                                        I think you might be missing some of the bigger picture here. Walmart is a small fish in a big sea, of what we are discussing. Walmart did not open up trade with China and elsewhere. Walmart probably does not knowingly hire to many under the table worker's either, the press would have a field day with it, if they got caught. They are a biggest chain outlet now. KMart and Target used to be. They payed about the same and hired alot of part time workers with few benifits also. Like I said before most of these jobs were filled by high school and colledge kids not long ago. Alot of housewilves used to work there part time in the 70's and 80's, when married women with children, hit the work force in enerst. What has changed is alot of the mainline middle class manufacturing and other middle paying jobs are gone now, or hard to come by. Walmart is what is left in alot of places, espicially small towns. One thing Walmart did do, is put alot of smaller companies out of business. Right or wrong, if they followed the law, that is part of Free Enterprize. If you don't agree with the Law, you cannot blame Walmart in this instance, maybe their lobbyists.  I don't care for them, because they sell alot of junk, and their service is not that great. It is not the rank file employee's fault, it is a management and company struture, issue. They are definitely in business for the maximun abomt of profit, like all corporations now. Walmart does make a good diversion, form the root of the problem though.