Minimal Wage. Raises. Inflation. Cost of living.
- Thread starter ThatDude30
- Start date
Markle
Diamond Member
You've never owned much rental property for any period of time, have you?
Wyatt earp
Diamond Member
- Apr 21, 2012
- 69,975
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This has to be the most dumb ass out of touch with reality thread I have seen on the net in 20 years ..
Jesus christ..
Will you quit lying bum?
ThatDude30
Gold Member
- Thread starter
- #84
o yea it so out of touch with reality. Dude this reality
Markle
Diamond Member
I take it you are aware of the FACT that it is former President Bill Clinton who is responsible for the massive increase in the compensation of CEO's and others.
President Clinton too thought he had a brilliant way to put a cap on CEO compensation. Instead, it worked just the opposite.
Next try?
EverCurious
Gold Member
^ So you'd prefer to sink the boat like every other socialist country in history or what?
----
The reality is that businesses are there to make a profit, instead of hating profit, we need to harness that drive. It's just like a sled dog team; dogs are naturally hyper, instead of beating them to stop being hyper, we hooked their asses up to the sled to make use of their natural tendencies.
Ya'll talk about profit margins; someone suggested a cap of 50%. Almost no business makes 50% so it's a stupid 'implication' to begin with; the average net profit margin across all businesses is somewhere in the 11-15% range. Ya'll are blinded by hatred and envy and not actually looking at reality, seriously.
When you folks talk about profit margins that's "net" AKA their sales - their bills. A dumbed down version here, but out of that profit must come:
"emergency savings" used to cover downturns in sales, recessions, getting sued, unexpected employee training, etc.
"undocumented expenses" that could be the investors and shit like that (though often said investors write their profit expectation into the "business plan" and it's considered an expense - like they're owed 1% of gross profits a year or something)
"improvements/repairs" (this one could be under expenses, to example a saw mill who constantly has to replace blades and stuff, though "in general" businesses with high profit margins do not count it as an expense - fast food for example acts like all their equipment will last forever, vs businesses with low profit margins often count it as an expense - a saw mill knows that their saw blades and motors are going to need to be regularly replaced so they'll have an "expense" category for it, which is like... earmarked savings.)
"expansion" this includes little shit like hiring additional employees and bigger shit like opening new stores
A business has a fiscal responsibility to maintain solvency, that means that they absolutely cannot ever live "paycheck to paycheck." There are a ton of reasons for this; like a mall will not rent a business a space if they don't have a net profit + profit margin that proves solvency, they'll go belly up if there's any drop off in sales or recession or even if say gas prices rise.
A bit of rambling on the later because I actually a good example of this. During the recession one section of Alaska was hit especially hard - tourism. When two of the RV mechanic shops went under in Anchorage; we lost about six RV rental companies because their profit margins were not large enough to handle the "new" cost of mechanic work but they couldn't raise their prices enough to compensate because the "other" RV rental companies who survived were the ones who had retained their own service departments, they'd invested their profits into the future of their company as well as "increased their productivity [to expenses]" when they'd first expanded into service. (Another "concept" you non-business people often misuse here: their "increase of productivity" came with hiring more people, aka more jobs, more money in the economy, etc. - that too is part of "trickle down" - not all "productivity increases" are through workers working harder.)
On the other hand there is one business who operates as ya'll seem to want /all/ businesses to operate [with less profit margin or more like the living paycheck to paycheck idea] This company did rentals and mechanical, however, after the downturn of tourism they were forced to cut costs; even though they "survived" the downturn in sales, a good number of other RV mechanic places had sold out to "foreign" (non-local) investments (combining into Princess Tours, Primer Tours, etc. - those mechanics only work for their parent companies now, they don't do "outside" work - like personal RVs or other RV rental companies stuff) Anyway, this one particular company turned to employee investment. Of course the employees didn't have as much to invest, so they "cut corners" and "made due" with the profit they had available and let all of their RVIA certified mechanics go. As an employee invested company they can take that risk; and honestly it's a matter of time before one of their non-certified $15/h mechanics ***** up a break job and they'll get sued into the ground.
VS outside (non-employee) investor companies (with a BOD kind of thing,) would /never/ agree to that kind of arrangement because the risk is too high; they could be held personally liable and shit. And here you can see another "layer" of prevention for the idea of businesses living "paycheck to paycheck" like one c/would manage personal finances.
It's like as a non-business you can choose to run the risk of say not paying for full coverage insurance on your car; the risk being that if you get in a wreck and cannot afford a rental you could be in a shithole of trouble. A business /cannot/ ever be in a shithole of trouble like that because it means their business goes under, they get sued, or other seriously bad shit. Businesses almost always have to "overprotect" themselves, especially these days...
It's like the Anchorage Dispatch News up here just went under (was a bad management situation, Anchorage isn't a liberal town but they were only printing liberal trash stories and lost like half their subscribers.) They ended up dumping $3M in debt through chapter 7 bankruptcy; which means all their debtors, the building that was renting to them, the utilities, even their employees all went unpaid. (And that unpaid debt will likely be passed onto other consumers of the utils or the building lease; thus prices go up for everyone, and there you have an example of the bad side of the "$15/h min wage" kind of argument, as well as another argument for why it is in /your/ interest for businesses to "shield" themselves from bankruptcy.) Anyway, in this case the employees at least got lucky, a local state paper bought the company and was able to convince the bankruptcy court to let them get a loan to buy the company and an additional $1M of "assets sell off" to pay the existing employees their unpaid wages; [unattached to the chap 7 aka not touchable by the unpaid debtors] (and thus the new owners were able to retain those employees because training a herd of new employees to deliver like 100k papers on every street in town during the winter is a shithole mess of unbelievable proportions. It was a very wise decision on the new owners part, plus it endeared all the employees to them as well, they've actually seen a massive shift in how many folks quit routes at the first snow; something like a 55% improvement over the past 3 decades
)
This is all something I actually learned "the hard way." I'd started making my own jewelry back in 97 or so as a hobby because I couldn't ever find anything I liked, shit sold off my neck, folks up here just loved it. In 99 I decided to make a go of doing that so I'd be home with the kids more than I was the corporate world. I just kind of bumped along like ya'll want businesses to do; no savings, no profit margin buffer, no anything. I made maybe $50k a year average in profit through contracts with local stores and local parties/sales events/bazaars/etc, even had a contract with Nordstrom up here. Then I broke my wrist and shit hit the fan. I couldn't fulfill my contracts so I had to pay all those off; they'd forwarded me money to buy the supplies for the jewelry. I got hit with like five "breach of contract" suits just because I'd had an accident. I mean it's legal, right even, but still, it's not like I was intentionally not filling the contract right? It doesn't matter though, because ya know, they put money in and deserved something back for that investment right? If I hadn't pulled money from my personal investments I would have to file bankruptcy and stiff them all :/ My second business was a web design business shortly after, I'd made my own site for my jewelry business and it was the 90s ya know so I jumped on the internet bandwagon, still hoping to spend more time with my kids. By 2000 I was working part time again because there wasn't enough profit, so another "hobby" business, but I'd planned ahead a bit better that second time; I actually didn't shut that one down until 2011; I rode out quite a few years through the recession because really there wasn't an overhead on it and I'd put away enough profit to cover my hosting server costs for five years. The recession wiped out all but one of my 50ish clients >.< Terrible to watch all those folks go under one by one and there was just nothing they could do about it because people just weren't buying :/ At least my third business was a great success until I "retired" (about four years ago) ~shrug~ Now, as I'm "retired," I just invest in others businesses rather than taking on the personal liability, as an investor I am shielded from a lot of the legal hoopla and yet I still get a say in how the business is run. I prefer "one off" investments; more like an investment loan where someone else owns the company and I'm just a debtor... kind of like a more expensive version of KickStarter heh
----
The reality is that businesses are there to make a profit, instead of hating profit, we need to harness that drive. It's just like a sled dog team; dogs are naturally hyper, instead of beating them to stop being hyper, we hooked their asses up to the sled to make use of their natural tendencies.
Ya'll talk about profit margins; someone suggested a cap of 50%. Almost no business makes 50% so it's a stupid 'implication' to begin with; the average net profit margin across all businesses is somewhere in the 11-15% range. Ya'll are blinded by hatred and envy and not actually looking at reality, seriously.
When you folks talk about profit margins that's "net" AKA their sales - their bills. A dumbed down version here, but out of that profit must come:
"emergency savings" used to cover downturns in sales, recessions, getting sued, unexpected employee training, etc.
"undocumented expenses" that could be the investors and shit like that (though often said investors write their profit expectation into the "business plan" and it's considered an expense - like they're owed 1% of gross profits a year or something)
"improvements/repairs" (this one could be under expenses, to example a saw mill who constantly has to replace blades and stuff, though "in general" businesses with high profit margins do not count it as an expense - fast food for example acts like all their equipment will last forever, vs businesses with low profit margins often count it as an expense - a saw mill knows that their saw blades and motors are going to need to be regularly replaced so they'll have an "expense" category for it, which is like... earmarked savings.)
"expansion" this includes little shit like hiring additional employees and bigger shit like opening new stores
A business has a fiscal responsibility to maintain solvency, that means that they absolutely cannot ever live "paycheck to paycheck." There are a ton of reasons for this; like a mall will not rent a business a space if they don't have a net profit + profit margin that proves solvency, they'll go belly up if there's any drop off in sales or recession or even if say gas prices rise.
A bit of rambling on the later because I actually a good example of this. During the recession one section of Alaska was hit especially hard - tourism. When two of the RV mechanic shops went under in Anchorage; we lost about six RV rental companies because their profit margins were not large enough to handle the "new" cost of mechanic work but they couldn't raise their prices enough to compensate because the "other" RV rental companies who survived were the ones who had retained their own service departments, they'd invested their profits into the future of their company as well as "increased their productivity [to expenses]" when they'd first expanded into service. (Another "concept" you non-business people often misuse here: their "increase of productivity" came with hiring more people, aka more jobs, more money in the economy, etc. - that too is part of "trickle down" - not all "productivity increases" are through workers working harder.)
On the other hand there is one business who operates as ya'll seem to want /all/ businesses to operate [with less profit margin or more like the living paycheck to paycheck idea] This company did rentals and mechanical, however, after the downturn of tourism they were forced to cut costs; even though they "survived" the downturn in sales, a good number of other RV mechanic places had sold out to "foreign" (non-local) investments (combining into Princess Tours, Primer Tours, etc. - those mechanics only work for their parent companies now, they don't do "outside" work - like personal RVs or other RV rental companies stuff) Anyway, this one particular company turned to employee investment. Of course the employees didn't have as much to invest, so they "cut corners" and "made due" with the profit they had available and let all of their RVIA certified mechanics go. As an employee invested company they can take that risk; and honestly it's a matter of time before one of their non-certified $15/h mechanics ***** up a break job and they'll get sued into the ground.
VS outside (non-employee) investor companies (with a BOD kind of thing,) would /never/ agree to that kind of arrangement because the risk is too high; they could be held personally liable and shit. And here you can see another "layer" of prevention for the idea of businesses living "paycheck to paycheck" like one c/would manage personal finances.
It's like as a non-business you can choose to run the risk of say not paying for full coverage insurance on your car; the risk being that if you get in a wreck and cannot afford a rental you could be in a shithole of trouble. A business /cannot/ ever be in a shithole of trouble like that because it means their business goes under, they get sued, or other seriously bad shit. Businesses almost always have to "overprotect" themselves, especially these days...
It's like the Anchorage Dispatch News up here just went under (was a bad management situation, Anchorage isn't a liberal town but they were only printing liberal trash stories and lost like half their subscribers.) They ended up dumping $3M in debt through chapter 7 bankruptcy; which means all their debtors, the building that was renting to them, the utilities, even their employees all went unpaid. (And that unpaid debt will likely be passed onto other consumers of the utils or the building lease; thus prices go up for everyone, and there you have an example of the bad side of the "$15/h min wage" kind of argument, as well as another argument for why it is in /your/ interest for businesses to "shield" themselves from bankruptcy.) Anyway, in this case the employees at least got lucky, a local state paper bought the company and was able to convince the bankruptcy court to let them get a loan to buy the company and an additional $1M of "assets sell off" to pay the existing employees their unpaid wages; [unattached to the chap 7 aka not touchable by the unpaid debtors] (and thus the new owners were able to retain those employees because training a herd of new employees to deliver like 100k papers on every street in town during the winter is a shithole mess of unbelievable proportions. It was a very wise decision on the new owners part, plus it endeared all the employees to them as well, they've actually seen a massive shift in how many folks quit routes at the first snow; something like a 55% improvement over the past 3 decades
)This is all something I actually learned "the hard way." I'd started making my own jewelry back in 97 or so as a hobby because I couldn't ever find anything I liked, shit sold off my neck, folks up here just loved it. In 99 I decided to make a go of doing that so I'd be home with the kids more than I was the corporate world. I just kind of bumped along like ya'll want businesses to do; no savings, no profit margin buffer, no anything. I made maybe $50k a year average in profit through contracts with local stores and local parties/sales events/bazaars/etc, even had a contract with Nordstrom up here. Then I broke my wrist and shit hit the fan. I couldn't fulfill my contracts so I had to pay all those off; they'd forwarded me money to buy the supplies for the jewelry. I got hit with like five "breach of contract" suits just because I'd had an accident. I mean it's legal, right even, but still, it's not like I was intentionally not filling the contract right? It doesn't matter though, because ya know, they put money in and deserved something back for that investment right? If I hadn't pulled money from my personal investments I would have to file bankruptcy and stiff them all :/ My second business was a web design business shortly after, I'd made my own site for my jewelry business and it was the 90s ya know so I jumped on the internet bandwagon, still hoping to spend more time with my kids. By 2000 I was working part time again because there wasn't enough profit, so another "hobby" business, but I'd planned ahead a bit better that second time; I actually didn't shut that one down until 2011; I rode out quite a few years through the recession because really there wasn't an overhead on it and I'd put away enough profit to cover my hosting server costs for five years. The recession wiped out all but one of my 50ish clients >.< Terrible to watch all those folks go under one by one and there was just nothing they could do about it because people just weren't buying :/ At least my third business was a great success until I "retired" (about four years ago) ~shrug~ Now, as I'm "retired," I just invest in others businesses rather than taking on the personal liability, as an investor I am shielded from a lot of the legal hoopla and yet I still get a say in how the business is run. I prefer "one off" investments; more like an investment loan where someone else owns the company and I'm just a debtor... kind of like a more expensive version of KickStarter heh
Last edited:
BlackSand
Nobody
- Oct 23, 2013
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Uh, no ... That's kind of why I identified it as a flaw ...
My point is that labor is a cost that influences price as long as the owners want to profit.
People don't get to pick and choose who benefits by any other means than where they decide to spend their money.
.
EverCurious
Gold Member
Uh, no ... That's kind of why I identified it as a flaw ...
My point is that labor is a cost that influences price as long as the owners want to profit.
People don't get to pick and choose who benefits by any other means than where they decide to spend their money.
.
Gotcha. Still I disagree, if the tide is taking the boat up, even the cockroaches and rats are raised to a higher standard. Just imagine what all the folks in the third world would think of the American "poor's" standard of living... Dem's like to paint a terrible picture, but in order to do so they willfully ignore the bad choices that people make which effect's their lives. To example, continuing to work at minimum wage when you need a better paying job, or crime, or having kids one cannot afford, etc. They also have a rather high expectation of "living wage" - meaning that to them a single "living wage" should be able to pay for the basics (rent, food, electricity, water, etc) plus a lease on a car every five years, the latest iPhone, fast food every night, and five kids without having to collect any child support from 'their baby dadas'...
Although on the latter, the Alaska child support enforcement division goes ballistic trying to find dad if the mom collects welfare/food stamps etc. (I'm not actually sure if that's a local thing or a Federal thing. Anyone know?) Its like my husbands son's mother had once filed for some welfare shit and they immediately opened a child support order for their son and nailed him to the wall trying to pay for everything under the sun; even the medical insurance that he already paid for his son though work (another requirement of CSED up here, if there's insurance available through work they demand it be purchased by the non-custodial parent.) It was kind of odd because he'd been paying mom directly as per her request so there wasn't even a case with child support enforcement. She was so pissed that it went into CSED that she screamed at him on the phone for like two hours over /him/ putting it into CSED - at the time she didn't admit that she was applying for welfare so she'd triggered it herself, and my husband was completely baffled as to how it ended up into CSED. (See, up here(?) when you apply for welfare with children, the state takes some/all of your child support to help pay for that - she was apparently thinking she could idk basically "double dip" because he was paying her directly.)
BlackSand
Nobody
- Oct 23, 2013
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Yeah ... You don't need the tide to get a better boat ... That takes an entirely different discipline.
.
EverCurious
Gold Member
^ Yes well if you didn't notice, the majority of millennials don't have those skills...
BlackSand
Nobody
- Oct 23, 2013
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There is nothing the government can do to supply them with those skills ... Except kick them out of the nest.
As long as they have a safe and secure place to entertain their lack of ambition and initiative ... They will never fly.
.
ThatDude30
Gold Member
- Thread starter
- #93
I personally haven't made a penny less then 40k except for 1 job right after highschool graduation. Last year I made 168k. I have friends who work for way less then they are worth. I know people with a masters degree, I forget in what, but had to take a factory job.
I just feel that companies should pay their employees based on that companies income. I mean if the ceos are bringing in 100k-200k or even more they can afford to pay more then $7.25.
- Moderator
- #94
If people are willing to work for $7.25 why should they pay more?
Thinker101
Diamond Member
- Mar 25, 2017
- 28,235
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- 2,415
Uh, no ... That's kind of why I identified it as a flaw ...
My point is that labor is a cost that influences price as long as the owners want to profit.
People don't get to pick and choose who benefits by any other means than where they decide to spend their money.
.
Gotcha. Still I disagree, if the tide is taking the boat up, even the cockroaches and rats are raised to a higher standard. Just imagine what all the folks in the third world would think of the American "poor's" standard of living... Dem's like to paint a terrible picture, but in order to do so they willfully ignore the bad choices that people make which effect's their lives. To example, continuing to work at minimum wage when you need a better paying job, or crime, or having kids one cannot afford, etc. They also have a rather high expectation of "living wage" - meaning that to them a single "living wage" should be able to pay for the basics (rent, food, electricity, water, etc) plus a lease on a car every five years, the latest iPhone, fast food every night, and five kids without having to collect any child support from 'their baby dadas'...
Although on the latter, the Alaska child support enforcement division goes ballistic trying to find dad if the mom collects welfare/food stamps etc. (I'm not actually sure if that's a local thing or a Federal thing. Anyone know?) Its like my husbands son's mother had once filed for some welfare shit and they immediately opened a child support order for their son and nailed him to the wall trying to pay for everything under the sun; even the medical insurance that he already paid for his son though work (another requirement of CSED up here, if there's insurance available through work they demand it be purchased by the non-custodial parent.) It was kind of odd because he'd been paying mom directly as per her request so there wasn't even a case with child support enforcement. She was so pissed that it went into CSED that she screamed at him on the phone for like two hours over /him/ putting it into CSED - at the time she didn't admit that she was applying for welfare so she'd triggered it herself, and my husband was completely baffled as to how it ended up into CSED. (See, up here(?) when you apply for welfare with children, the state takes some/all of your child support to help pay for that - she was apparently thinking she could idk basically "double dip" because he was paying her directly.)
That may be true, but they would still be cockroaches and rats. Being at the bottom of the totem pole isn't fun, if the pole were raised they would still be at the bottom.
Wyatt earp
Diamond Member
- Apr 21, 2012
- 69,975
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One flaw in "The Tide Raises All Boats" theory.
Where it is true the tide raises all boats ... You are still in the same, not a better boat ...
.
The post of the decade on the minimum wage issue....(I am going to copy it off you
)
BlackSand
Nobody
- Oct 23, 2013
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Totally unrelated point but just a tidbit of knowledge ... The lower a person is depicted on a totem pole, the higher standing they have in the community.
Now back to the regularly scheduled discussion.
.
Ray From Cleveland
Diamond Member
- Aug 16, 2015
- 97,215
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If they can afford to pay more, then so can you at 168K a year.
You don't need to pay your lawn care company $40.00 per cut, you can afford to pay them $200.00 a cut.
You don't need to pay your plumber $75.00 to fix your toilet, pay him $300.00 instead.
You don't need to tip your waitress 10%. You can afford to tip 45%.
It has nothing to do with what a company can afford, it has to do with what the labor is worth. Nobody overpays their labor including you.
Wyatt earp
Diamond Member
- Apr 21, 2012
- 69,975
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How do you know they can afford to pay more? You have 50,000 employed making $15,000 a year you do know that is like $754,000,000 a year in pay roll right?
Thinker101
Diamond Member
- Mar 25, 2017
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My "anonymous sources" indicate:
Low man on the totem pole means that the person is at the bottom in a hierarchical system. A totem pole is a statue of carved faces stacked one on top of the other. The face at the bottom is the last of the stack. The carved faces above it, would be higher up in rank or authority.
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