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Mickler & Associates, Inc. » Small Business Resources » Inspiration and Ideas » I Like the Hike in Minimum Wage!

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Author Topic: I Like the Hike in Minimum Wage!
RP Mickler
Administrator
Posts: 44
Post I Like the Hike in Minimum Wage!
on: August 2, 2009, 11:03

So I posted this on my Twitter account today:

“I’m glad min wage went up. It’s good for everyone if the cost of human labor is too expensive to have twirling signs at road intersections.”

“Wow – maybe we’d value people more and offer incentives to look for better jobs than being a gyrating sandwich board…? Crazytalk…”

I thought this topic was hitting a good viral nerve for discussion so I created a forum to discuss it further.

What do you think? Is raising the minimum wage during a recession good for America or does it damage the small to mid-range business by hiking expenses?

Any thoughts and ideas appreciated in a friendly discussion!
R

With over 14 years of professional technology experience, Mickler has earned his CISSP and MCSE certification, is a published technology author, is an adjunct professor, and works as a technology consultant to small businesses. He lives in Vancouver, Washington.
RP Mickler
Administrator
Posts: 44
Post Re: I Like the Hike in Minimum Wage!
on: August 2, 2009, 11:20

Myself, I’ve always passed by the sandwich board folks and wondered what if it was easier to go to school, or, learn a trade?

If the cost and ease-of-access to an alternative was lower than the marginal return for dancing on the side of a road with a sign, would more people take that opportunity?

Further, I’ve wondered: is it practical for a small business owner to resort to paying legions of dancing billboards on public thoroughfares for cheap advertising?

If wages are kept low, the value of labor is undermined, and the middle-classes ability to compete and earn a living is diminished. Here in the US, we see such macroeconomic results:

Are you better off than you were 40 years ago? Not if
you’re a minimum wage worker. It would take .92 today to match the buying power of the minimum wage at its peak in 1968, the year Martin
Luther King died fighting for living wages for sanitation workers.

In today’s dollars, the 1968 hourly minimum wage adds
up to 20,634 a year working full time. The new federal
minimum wage of 7.25 comes to just 15,080. That’s $
5,554 in lost wages.

(Source: http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=ind0907d&L=PORTSIDE&P=15227)

And there are parallels to our financial crisis today as compared to the Great Depression when the minimum wage was enacted:

President Franklin Roosevelt called the minimum wage
“an essential part of economic recovery.” Roosevelt
said, millions of workers “receive pay so low that they
have little buying power. Aside from the undoubted fact
that they thereby suffer great human hardship, they are
unable to buy adequate food and shelter, to maintain
health or to buy their share of manufactured goods.”

Roosevelt said, “The increase of national purchasing
power [is] an underlying necessity of the day.” And so
it is today.

(Source: http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=ind0907d&L=PORTSIDE&P=15227)

So, I’d say that more secure, financially-stable workers gives small business more consumers – increases revenue rather than erodes expenses through higher labor costs. That’s the better approach, eh, than continuously exploiting labor and suppressing their choices and opportunities?

Just my thoughts – yours?

R

With over 14 years of professional technology experience, Mickler has earned his CISSP and MCSE certification, is a published technology author, is an adjunct professor, and works as a technology consultant to small businesses. He lives in Vancouver, Washington.
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