What should the federal minimum wage be?

[PistolSteve]

Poll question: What should the federal minimum wage be?

I have another minimum wage poll (dealing with the minimum wage for teens) here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2856961

[WindRavenX]

1. it should be a living waged tied directly to inflation

Static minimum wages are a huge problem in this country right now, and it's ridiculous.

I think someone said the min. living wage would be 11.00/hr? Sounds reasonable to me.

[PistolSteve]

4. So should it go down with inflation too?

I think that's the biggest argument with tying it to inflation. Others say it compounds the negative effects on small businesses when this is done. I'm just being the devil's advocate here....

[WindRavenX]

5. I know nothing about econ, but I think...

...wouldn't a lowered inflation = lowered goods? So that what you makes still enables you to keep your head above water?

Or am I wrong?

If I am wrong, then you raise a good point.

[PistolSteve]

9. Yes, lowered inflation means lower prices

But wages wouldn't be adjusted daily... they'd be adjusted every year. Imagine being poor and instantly losing $50 from your paycheck when you don't really see anything get cheaper.

[DireStrike]

24. Paychecks don't change much by the year anyway

You get your token raise of 2 cents an hour or whatever. Updating wages yearly to meet inflation would be far better than the current situation, and would highlight exactly how much money business owners suck out of their "enterprise".

[PistolSteve]

61. Yea, but would it be better if the boor got a paycut with a decrease in inflation? nt

[DireStrike]

62. I have no problems with that

Deflation means increased buying power.

[WindRavenX]

27. gotcha

So, things would have to be done on a year to year basis?

[Lone_Star_Dem]

10. I'd prefer it be tied to the consumer price index

That's a more realistic gage of what it cost to live.

[PistolSteve]

23. But then should it be possible for it to decrease? nt

[Lone_Star_Dem]

48. Here's a graph showing US price levels from 1665 to 2005

Somehow I feel safe in saying that won't be a problem.

http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/pl1665.htm

[endarkenment]

74. What a great chart. Thanks for that.

One can stick a pin in that graph for "the kleptocracy starts here".

[endarkenment]

2. $15 is $600 a week. Can you live on that? nt.

[PistolSteve]

3. $600 a week? I live on $350 a month.... nt

[Hosnon]

68. $2400/month?...God yes! But it should vary by state. nt

[endarkenment]

71. Yes sure, $15 in most urban areas is tough to get by on.

Rent food clothing taxes utilities and transportation will eat that up pretty quick. So should the national minimum wage reflect what it takes to get by on in rural Alabama or urban Los Angeles?

[Hosnon]

75. I said in my post that it should vary by state. nt

[CrispyQ]

6. $15 an hour.

That's $31,200 a year - in my opinion, not all that much for a family of four.

I'd like to see our reps & senators live on that for one year. :eyes:

[PistolSteve]

8. A family of four with only one adult working...

Isn't really the typical scenario, but I understand where you are coming from. I live on $350-$450 a month. I don't have kids and split my rent and I still manage to pay for college.

I believe it should be much higher but $15.00? I have never lived with an income in my family above $30,000 and we did fine and were quite grateful.

[PistolSteve]

7. I'm surprised at the number of people who voted 'over $15'

I guess I have personal limits... when wages get that high people working at McDonalds would be making near what college grads do. I guess I don't see that as fair.

[Donnachaidh]

11. then complain to your employer

and tell THEM to make up the difference.

[hughee99]

13. Don't worry about that...

If they raise the minimum wage significantly, other wages will have to go up as well.

If you worked for a company for 2 years and worked your way up to $10 an hour (for example), then the minimum wage goes up to $11, you'll get a least a $1 raise to get you up to $11. A person who starts that same day would also get $11. If you had 2 years experience, making the same as someone who just started, wouldn't you be a little upset, despite getting a 10% raise?

[PistolSteve]

14. Yes I would be upset... that is my point

That's why raising it to something like $15 would upset a lot of people making $30,000 a year. Their wages wouldn't go up much but their buying power would go down (higher wages = higher prices)

[hughee99]

15. I agree...

I didn't really state my point that clearly. Sorry about that.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

19. That's why those who advocate a substantial raise also recommend doing it in stages

It gives the economy a chance to adjust. The last increase worker productivity raised along with consumer spending. This naturally adjusted the burden that was placed on most of the employers.

It all balances out in the end and if it were to be done correctly it will greatly reduce poverty.

[Selatius]

40. It doesn't work that way.

If you made 10 after 2 years of work, and the minimum went up to 11, you would go up to 11 by law, however, the employer would have to adjust the entire pay scale upward so that those who worked for 2 years aren't being paid as low as those who just started work.

I know this because I had to do this as part of my management classes. Everybody gets a raise, not just those at the bottom of the barrel. Otherwise, you just piss off employees who worked for a couple of years for you and now find they are being paid as if they just started today.

If you raised the minimum wage to 8, it will not cause as much a disruption in pay scales for many small firms than it would if the minimum wage was 10, 11, 12, or even 15.

If you really wanted to ensure people who aren't dependents get jobs that actually pay a living wage, then you should do something else besides raise the minimum wage, like increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is far better aimed at poverty relief than the minimum wage. Because few employers are going to be willing to hire very many teenagers, many of whom are still in high school, if they have to be paid at 15 dollars an hour.

[hughee99]

63. Yes...

I didn't really explain myself very well. The post I was responding to was talking about the "over $15" responders saying that $15 approaches what college graduates were getting. Rereading my post, it really doesn't even make that much sense to me, but I was attempting to comment on how other wages would have to go up as well.

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. I ran some numbers on this awhile back

In terms of purchasing power, the $2.50 minimum wage in California when I was 18 (1974) is equivalent to $10.73 now.

Since states can adopt their own minimum wage but it can't be lower than the federal minimum, I voted for $8-$9.50.

[The Anti-Neo Con]

16. I think $15.00 is a good start.

Around here, that's about what it takes to live a very basic lifestyle.

[PistolSteve]

17. where the hell does $30,000 a year only give you a 'basic' lifestyle?

That implies making less than $30,000 puts you in poverty.

A basic lifestyle is:

No cable TV
Take the bus (if there is one)
No internet
No fast food
No vacations
Roomate
Cheap apartment
Move to cheap location (if you are only making minimum wage, you can get that rate anywhere)

I said it before - I know I don't live in Manhattan, but I live off $350 a month. Most people can't, but I manage. I say quadruple what I make - perhaps x5... but multiply it by 10? That seems a little absurd.

[DireStrike]

28. In a city, that's something like the poverty line.

$740 a month for this studio apartment in Queens.

[PistolSteve]

42. So... get a roomate - $2600 a month isn't a 'basic' lifestyle

Yes it should be higher, but $15 an hour?

[lapfog_1]

39. Well, try HERE in California

Rent, with roommates, is $600 to %700 (and that's a basic no frills apartment - YOUR share!).
take the bus? not an option. buts let's pretend that it is or you can bike to work or share a ride... but you are still going to spend $60 to $100 a month on transportation. Electric bill, your share, is $20 to $40 a month (thanks Arnold! Thanks Enron!). That's with no AC. Cell phone, $30. Food (groceries) is around $75/week or $300/month (no eating out, even occasional fast food). Health care? forget it. Incidentals (toilet paper, razor blades, the occasional trip to the thrift shop for clothes)... $80/month.

Total $1200 a month / give or take $100.

And by the way... it's expensive to be poor... a lot of things that middle and upper class people pay very little for, like banking, become very expensive to poor people.

[PistolSteve]

41. $1200 a month does not equal $600 a week nt

[lapfog_1]

45. I assumed your $600/week was pre-tax

$2400/month pre-tax is about $1700 take-home.

Which gives one about $400 to $500 in "extra" money. So now maybe, just maybe (if you are not me, for example) you can buy health car or make a car payment plus insurance.

Wow. Be still my heart.

Course, if you were me, my health care (insurance with a $2,500 deductible) would run $900/month.... so sorry, thanks for playing the California dream game.

[hfojvt]

69. we really shouldn't base a national minimum wage

on California prices. States have their own minimum wages too, but I am guessing that there are many people, even in California, living on far less than $30,000 annual.

[pitohui]

52. you are not factoring in health insurance

i see you are in college so you are young and don't need it

at my age health insurance alone starts at several hundred dollars a month for a woman in good health and that's with deductibles and co-pays

your $350 would not even cover my health costs and i'm a slim non-smoker

you are a college kid and don't know the real world yet, which is nice for you, but it means that you are making statements about finances based on total ignorance

a middle-aged woman who is not fast on her feet can't even pay rent for $350 a month, the kind of neighborhood she'd have to live in, she'd be dead in a month, at your age you can always run faster from the bad guys i guess

[originalpckelly]

18. Have you ever thought of how people are going to pay for this?

Right now a minimum wage employee makes $10712 an year. At $9.50 an hour, 40 hours a week, that comes to 380 a week, or $19760 a year.

If an example employer has two employees, and pays them minimum wage, and isn't fucking them over while keeping the money for her/himself, in other words can only pay those two employees the minimum wage, he/she will have to fire one of them to pay for the increase in the minimum wage. (That's for the increase to $9.50 an hour.)

Not only is that not good for the person who is fired, it's bad for the customers of the business who'll have 1/2 less service than before.

That's why any minimum wage increase must contain a mandate that wage increase come directly out of the profits of a business. Only then can this nation guarantee economic equality, because otherwise employers will simply fire those minimum wage employees they can't afford on their former budgets.

[endarkenment]

70. There is zero evidence that modest increases

in the minimum wage have any negative effect on economic activity. Go google the research, folks have tried and failed to measure the effect. The textbook logic on this assumes that nothing else changes except the minimum wage, and that is idiocy, academic idiocy, but idiocy none the less.

How many additional jobs are created by the increase in cash circulation resulting from an increase in the minimum wage?

[in_cog_ni_to]

72. That's right and "A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats." n/t

[QuestionAll...]

20. it should be a percentage of what the top dogs in the company make.

1/1000th of a per cent? 1/2000th of what the millions of dollars a year CEO makes?

play with the fractions but I think this is the only fair way to deal with this. As for small companies whose owners are not flush with yachts and politicians, a special tax on the fortunate other employees who work for megas to ensure a federal minimum wage of at least $15.00 for all work.

How one persons work can be considered millions of dollars 'worth' more than anothers is so repulsive to me. Maybe I'm a closet commie or something.

[Deja Q]

21. I concur:

1. Labor generates all wealth
2. Quality of work results in higher quality products
3. Higher quality products bring people back more readily than a poor quality product that has that one feature you need. There are ways to get around needs; improvization.
4. A CEO will say he deserves more money because he makes decisions that affect the entire company. But a company is not a person, it is the combined efforts of all the people in it. Many CEOs have forgotten that. So have some workers.

[originalpckelly]

32. The last 3 I agree with, but the first one I have trouble with...

what if someone invents a new product, the new idea surely has value all to itself, doesn't it?

[PistolSteve]

22. I disagree - I hate that logic

A CEO running McDonalds SHOULD be able to make more than a CEO running a small business that pays a little more to their bottom employees.

I think it should based on COMPANY profits, not individual (CEO) profits.

All this would do is decrease a few CEO salaries and keep minimum wage low and company profits high.

[QuestionAll...]

25. okay, that sounds fine too. company profits not CEO salaries.

I'm sure many could live with that idea.

but then there's the bookkeeping angle and what is real profit - 'loss of 4 gazillion dollars to ineffective software purchase (I hear software is a great thing to sink false investment dollars into and make it come out as a loss) - in ligitation for the next 36 years.

actually, I changed my mind back to the original. CEO salaries, names, paystubbs, easier to track and not quite as fudgeable.

[PistolSteve]

34. Agreed - profits would have to be better defined... nt

[TahitiNut]

26. Here's the history of the federal minimum wage in TODAY'S dollars

It seems clear to me that an almost (phased in 2 steps with 6 months between) immediate increase to $7.50 is quite reasonable, and would still be lower than the minimum wage in several states. At the same time, I think another 'step' should probably be legislated - to $8.50 in 2010.

[originalpckelly]

30. I refer you to post #18(nt)

[TahitiNut]

37. Here ...

Corporate profits in relation to the wages paid to their employees is at highs not seen since just before the Great Depression. Employees are not receiving an equitable share of their own increased "productivity."

This is, of course, a serious systemic problem. As "investors" will tell you, they will put their money where the expected return is highest - even if that means they get their return because the employees are getting screwed. This is how labor gets commoditized - and it's sxacerbated by a tax structure where labor income is taxed at more than twice the rate as "invesstment" income (i.e. income from the labor of others.).

[originalpckelly]

67. Well, I don't know what to make of the taxes...

At first when I looked at the CGT v. the normal income tax, I thought it was obviously wrong.

15% is the amount paid by billionaire investors, while 25% is the amount paid by people making $30,000 a year.

Of course, that's until you do the math, and you realize the way the code works. Income is taxed in blocks, not brackets.

The first block of money up to $7,300 for everyone is taxed at 10%. The block of money from $7,300 to $29,700 is taxed at 15%. The final small difference between $29,700 is taxed at 25%, it comes to $300, and the taxes on it are $75.

When you do the math, it comes to about (rounding up) 14% of your income being taxed.

Of course, with the payroll taxes which are not charged on capital gains, your tax bill comes to 28% of your income, whereas a rich person making most of their money from long term investments will pay 15% of their income.

Normal everyday people pay a larger share of their income to taxes than the rich. This is not fair.

[Selatius]

47. The CPI may actually be low-balling the real rate of inflation.

If you view the pre-Clinton era CPI before Clinton screwed around with the CPI figure, we see this:

In the early 1990s, press reports began surfacing as to how the CPI really was significantly overstating inflation. If only the CPI inflation rate could be reduced, it was argued, then entitlements, such as social security, would not increase as much each year, and that would help to bring the budget deficit under control. Behind this movement were financial luminaries Michael Boskin, then chief economist to the first Bush Administration, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Although the ensuing political furor killed consideration of Congressionally mandated changes in the CPI, the BLS quietly stepped forward and began changing the system, anyway, early in the Clinton Administration.

Up until the Boskin/Greenspan agendum surfaced, the CPI was measured using the costs of a fixed basket of goods, a fairly simple and straightforward concept. The identical basket of goods would be priced at prevailing market costs for each period, and the period-to-period change in the cost of that market basket represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a constant standard of living.

The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that.

http://www.shadowstats.com/

[TahitiNut]

53. There seems to be a significant amount of 'spin in the steak v. hamburger analog.

The fact of the matter is that a 'market basket' DOES change over time due to many influences other than what's ascribed. A 1950's market basket including sugar, flour, salt, and a variety of in-season fruits and vegetables would have almost no bearing on today's market basket. Just as one small example, many people change their food selections not merely for economy reasons but, for example, health reasons. As we're warned that red meat and fatty foods are bad for our health, people have changed from beef and bacon to eating more chicken and some substitute for a bacon and eggs breakfast - say oatmeal or granola. In the 50s, oatmeal wasn't what "middle class" adults had for breakfast. Our consumption of 5lb. bags of sugar (drenching our cornflakes in it and adding whole milk) has dropped enormously ... but various forms of sugar have found their way into other foods. We trade off "convenience" for household labor - sometimes for far healthier pursuits. The number of adults in middle-class neighborhoods who engaged in hiking, biking, tennis, and other exercise endeavors was quite low in the 50s. It's common today. (After all, are cigarettes incuded in the basket?)

I have no illusions regarding the biases embedded in various federal statistical measures. At the same time, let's not toss babies out with bathwater.

All that said, we work with what we have and in presenting a historical picture of the minimum wage it's just not productive to digress into analyses of how any attempt to reflect it in terms of current dollars is flawed for some reason. Using the CPI is far easier to legitimize than, for example, a GDP inflator. (For more macro measures of national economics, I regard the "% of GDP' or an equivalent as far preferable.)

[Selatius]

73. I'm not advocating junking the CPI

I'm advocating undoing some of the gimmickry that has been inserted into the CPI for political purposes. If you want to keep track of the price of cars, chances are you would keep track of prices for both used cars and new cars, but with the way they set it up, they would rather report the price of used cars if they are dropping relative to the price of new cars instead of including both into the index.

If you found a way to suppress the CPI and you're the government, you'd make like a bandit as far as cost of living adjustments in terms of, for instance, Social Security payments, but if you're a recipient of Social Security, you get the short end of the stick when inflation out in the street is not the same as "core inflation" that they report in the news media.

It's not just SS recipients that are affected. Many labor contracts use the CPI as an arbiter of annual cost of living adjustments. In fact, all contracts that have a CPI component in them are affected. Commercial contracts between businesses that need to consider the cost of prices/inflation are also affected if they rest against the CPI.

[porphyrian]

29. It SHOULD be relative to the cost of living in the location of the employee...

...however, I doubt that will ever happen.

[lapfog_1]

31. All depends on where you live.

However, 30 hours a week should be enough for the basics for one adult...

Here that would be about $1500/month take home, or $2300/month gross, which is
$17.50/hour.

Nationally, it could be significantly less.

[kiahzero]

33. If the goal is for it to be a living income...

Why are we going through businesses to ensure a living income (in a rather crude manner, by the way), when we could do so directly and probably more efficiently and fairly?

[MUSTANG_2004]

76. That is an excellent idea

The problem with raising the minimum wage too high is you knock the least employable people (presumably the ones you most want to help) out of the job market.

[slackmaster]

35. There shouldn't be a federal minimum wage

There should be a federal law that requires each state to have a minimum wage, indexed to a standardized measure of cost of living.

[PistolSteve]

38. I like that... I'll have to think about it more. nt

[Warren DeMontague]

36. It should be a liveable wage, and we should have universal health care.

That should be the bare minimum for a civilized first world society.

Here's another question: When was the last time it was raised? 1993?

[Selatius]

43. 1997 was the last raise.

There hasn't been one since. By January, it will be a full decade since the minimum wage was changed. The good news is states have taken the initiative by raising it within their own borders. Several have indexed theirs to inflation so that it will never lose buying power again.

[Warren DeMontague]

44. Thanks for the answer. nt

[Abuhans]

46. Why not raise it really high?

I am not an economist, stuff about cycles and what to do during recessions and booms just goes over my head. But I'd like to think I have common sense, and I am curious, why doesn't the minimum wage be set much higher? What would be wrong with $50 an hour minimum wage? Won't the same things that are wrong with $50 an hour also be wrong with $1 an hour minimum wage just on a smaller scale?

[PistolSteve]

50. You're right - you're not an economist.

Raising it to $50 would cause massive business shutdowns and collapse our economy. No one would have jobs except the politicians.

[Abuhans]

51. Could do with out the insult but ok

So raising it that high causes massive unemployment because businesses can't afford to hire anybody. So by having the minimum wage lower than 50 dollars is it causing the same exact problems but on a smaller scale?

[Kelly Rupert]

54. Very simply, yes.

Businesses would hire more people if they didn't have to pay them, yes. We have to draw a line somewhere between managing unemployment and quality of life.

The full answer is more complex, but I'm afraid I lack the patience right now. Sorry.

[PistolSteve]

56. No - it isn't a straight line graph...

It is 'U' shaped. The goal is to maximize wealth for the poor and middle class. The question is - what amount is that? Too low and the poor are simply poor - too high and competition for jobs is higher because of business closures/job cuts.

[TahitiNut]

58. Fallacy of scale - small amounts of water are needed for drinking but LARGE amounts kill.

The presumption that 'good' and 'bad' are all merely scalable is a fallacy in reasoning. The right-wing claim that increases in the minimum wage cause unemployment have been disproved in the only way a negative can be proven: by a total failure to show the claimed effect in DOZENS of instances, both federal or state-wide, where the minimum wage has been raised in the past 50-60 years.

Note also, for example, that an increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.15 has virtually no effect in any state where that's already the minimum wage or below it - like Washington where the minimum wage is $7.63 or in New York or Alaska where it's already $7.15.

[Abuhans]

60. Good points

And if you want to work for less it isn't THAT hard, I myself have worked as an unofficial "helper" who was paid below minimum wage under the table. It was exciting to be semi-"underground" but also painful to think that my employer (She ran a little newspaper delivery business and had a friend and me bag newspapers before the cars went out) could get in legal trouble by employing me. It really only prevents the larger businesses from employing below minimum wage on a mass scale.

[TahitiNut]

66. Not all employees/employers are covered under FLSA.

It doesn't sound to me like that employment was covered, but it'd depend on more law than I know. (IANAL.)

If not covered under FLSA, and the state doesn't extend the FLSA coverage under state laws, then minimum wage laws may not apply. Domestic workers (maids, housekeepers, etc.) are a prominent exception (i.e. they're covered despite the exemptions).

Businesses with less than $500,000 in annual sales or receipts are often not covered, except for:
Engagement in interstate commerce
Production of goods for interstate commerce and/or closely related work
Construction activities
Domestic service

The DOL makes it a bit easier to figure this out ...
http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/scope/screen9.asp


It should be noted that it's a tactic of right-wing shills to build such employment strawmen to 'convince' someone who's not well-informed of the falsely-claimed inequities of the minimum wage. Poor grandma and grandpa in their little arts and crafts business they operate out of a garage that barely gives them a subsistence living can't pay little Johnny the neighbor kid to do things they're too disabled to do on their own. Those wicked, evil liberals!! It's HOGWASH!

[philosophie_en_rose]

49. It should be tied to the President's salary.

No President shall be paid more than 10 times the federal minimum wage.

(keep in mind that we pay for his living expenses, travel, etc. --> how much does a president really need :))

[TahitiNut]

55. I'd prefer that Senators and Representatives be paid a fixed multiple of the minimum wage ...

... IN THEIR STATES! In that way, the Senators and Representatives from California, Oregon, Washington, New York, and Illinois (mostly liberals!) would be paid more (as is just, of course) than the Senators and Representatives from Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Mississippi, Texas, and the other Cheap Labor states!

I mean ... let's talk about fair, OK? :evilgrin:

[philosophie_en_rose]

59. Works for me!

But VP and President ought to be tied to the federal minimum wage.

[rucky]

57. Should be tied into a COLA index. n/t

[Selatius]

64. Any minimum wage must be indexed to inflation.

It is the elephant in the room that isn't mentioned.

By setting up a floor that floats with inflation (or deflation), we will not have to worry about inflation giving the poorest a pay cut each year, and it removes the issue as a political football every several years.

Unfortunately, I don't think Democrats in Congress are going to index it to inflation. They would rather milk it for all the political capital its worth rather than truly take a stand on it by indexing it. I'll readily admit I was wrong if they do index to inflation, but I doubt they will.

[Cleita]

65. $15 an hour today would buy me what $1.25 an hour did

back in 1960. Although, back then housing and affordable health care wasn't as expensive as it is today. So this is what it would take to barely achieve that.

[Nobody]

77. I'd vote "Other" but there was no "Other" option. A rant, it's long.

The thing that guts companies isn't the idea that the lowest wage employees can live on what they make, it's that the executives frequently give themselves massive bonuses that are not in the least commensurate with their skills, experience, or the success of the company. Failing companies grant bonuses to execs who lay off hundreds of people. The wages that would otherwise go to people doing their jobs instead go to the execs. And the stockholders can't do much about it because 1) they are major shareholders and as such are on the board of directors and benefitting from this, or 2) they don't own enough stock to make a dent in the number of votes cast. If every small investor agreed and went against the board, they'd still lose. Boards don't release enough stock to allow their own percentage of shares to be overridden in anything.

So what I propose is this: Every publicly owned corporation should be carefully audited by an impartial panel. (Yes I know, finding a truly honest and impartial panel will be hard. Stay with me.) The highest paid person who gets any compensation at all should be allowed to make only a total of a certain reasonable multiple of what the lowest paid person makes. No executive should be allowed to earn any bonuses at all once a certain percentage of the pre-layoff workforce gets pink slips in a given fiscal year.

That way, you can claim that the lowest paid workers don't deserve to make a living wage and pay them crap wages. (They do deserve to be paid better than that, because their time is worth something, and if a manager covers for them, that manager doesn't get paid less despite doing someone else's job for a day.) If you pay the workers crap wages, you cut your own executive pay.

Now we come to temps. Many companies have temps that they have no intention of turning into real employees with benefits. We need to address this issue as well. If there are temps filling the same function for a certain amount of time, say for example 6 months to a year, that position needs to be filled with an employee, not a temp, as the job has been proven to be a stable one, not a fill-in stopgap matter. We measure positions, not individual temps to prevent the greediest employers from laying off the employees the day before they cross the temp to perm threshhold.

As it is now, no company on this earth employs people they don't need. They never have, they never will. In fact, there are too many companies who overpay their execs and starve the departments who need people the most. Wages at the bottom are frozen or go up by 1 or 2% for a "Walks on Water" performance review. Or managers are told not to rate anyone over Meets Expectations because they don't want to give people larger raises. Meanswhile, the execs make out like bandits as they kill morale, destroy initiative, instill a "Why Bother" attitude, and exacerbate already stressed people as they worry about how they're going to pay for what they have now while prices rise faster than their wages.

And my blood boils when I hear from the same execs gutting their companies of talent and money that raising minimum wage or hiring permanent employees rather than using permatemps (temps who have been at the same company in the same position for over a year) that doing the right thing will kill initiative and destroy morale, and that if they're working 40 hours a week and still unable to afford a rat-infested studio apartment in the slums, a 15 year old car, basic health care, basic needs such as clothing and food, somehow they're the ones at fault. You know what really kills initiative? The constant treadmill of working your ass off and not making enough to live a very simple lifestyle. Just to keep what you already have, what you may have already bought and paid for when you made more money or the prices were lower. Never mind buying new.

You can't put a number of what constitutes a living wage. It depends on location. It depends on whether you are a temp or a permanent employee. And therefore I propose that it be tied to the highest paid earners, including all bonuses. This doesn't limit anyone's pay. You're on the board of a publicly owned company and want to pay yourself 1 billion dollars this year? Great. Wonderful, but keep in mind that your lowest paid employees must all get bonuses that bring them up to the minimum wage you just declared by paying yourself that huge sum. Company can't afford it? Then you should rethink paying yourself 1 billion dollars for one year. Also keep in mind that you're probably on more than one board (there's so much cross-pollination on Wall Street), and that the other board members and execs are going to want their own 1 billion dollars.

What job is worth paying 1 billion dollars to one person for? What service does that one person provide? What benefit? There is none.