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But why should they have the onus to pay their lowest level employees more, save for the government demanding they do?

 Peregrine wrote:
But this criticism assumes that the local chain's CEO is actually worth the maximum CEO pay relative to the minimum-wage burger flipper. If you set the maximum CEO pay at a reasonable level of compensation for upper management of a major international corporation then only those employees will feel any impact from the law, while the local-company CEO isn't making enough to reach the cap anyway. Only two groups of people are going to see their salaries limited: major-corporation CEOs who feel entitled to obscene wealth (instead of just enough to be comfortably rich) while exploiting the labor of people who can't even pay for basic needs, and small-business CEOs who feel entitled to large-scale paychecks.

If you set the ratio high enough to still allow a somewhat plausible ratio of pay for McDonalds, then you've barely impacted any other company at all.

And why in the hell would you set the pay scale according to basic employee pay? Why would a company that employs burger flippers be so much more limited in what it pays its CEO compared to a company that employees engineers? And then if that company of engineers went and employed an apprentice, or a receptionist... the CEO has to take a pay cut.

Why wouldn't you, you know, just cap CEO pay at a total amount. Exactly like you've already put in place (albeit maybe don't make it so easily bypassed with bonus pay & stock issues).


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 cincydooley wrote:
But why should they have the onus to pay their lowest level employees more, save for the government demanding they do?

Well, that's the easy part - because most human beings consider it good that everyone who works receives a sufficient income in order to live well. The problem is that the system is convoluted and will produce all kinds of weirdness, but the idea of flattening pay scales so that people at the bottom get a little more... that's an easy one.

 sebster wrote:



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 cincydooley wrote:
But why should they have the onus to pay their lowest level employees more, save for the government demanding they do?

Well, that's the easy part - because most human beings consider it good that everyone who works receives a sufficient income in order to live well.

Shhh. Compassion doesnt work on Conservatices.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 sebster wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:
But why should they have the onus to pay their lowest level employees more, save for the government demanding they do?

Well, that's the easy part - because most human beings consider it good that everyone who works receives a sufficient income in order to live well.

Shhh. Compassion doesnt work on Conservatices.

This is at the top of your ignorant comments list. Congrats there.

@Seb - I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree; I just don't think a McJob should support "living well" unless you're in management.

Oh c'mon take a joke that is in obvious poor taste.

 sebster wrote:
If you set the ratio high enough to still allow a somewhat plausible ratio of pay for McDonalds, then you've barely impacted any other company at all.

That all depends on your definition of "plausible", and whether CEOs are entitled to obscene levels of wealth. I see no problem with giving them a massive pay cut, the job is still going to pay well enough that people will do it.

And it would have an effect on smaller companies, especially if you scale the cap up according to the number of employees. If McDonalds has to pay their burger flippers $15/hour because the CEO wants a bigger paycheck then the local burger place is going to have to make at least some effort to match those wages. And if the economy ever recovers to a point where there are more jobs than qualified employees then everyone else has to increase their wages to compete or they won't have anyone willing to work for them.

And why in the hell would you set the pay scale according to basic employee pay? Why would a company that employs burger flippers be so much more limited in what it pays its CEO compared to a company that employees engineers? And then if that company of engineers went and employed an apprentice, or a receptionist... the CEO has to take a pay cut.

But that's exactly the point: very few companies are going to employ nothing but engineers (and the hypothetical all-engineer company probably doesn't have a CEO at all), so the CEO's pay is still going to be capped by whatever minimum-wage secretary/janitor/whatever they employ. Engineers, as a general rule, aren't living in poverty or making anywhere near minimum wage so they aren't really relevant to this discussion.

Why wouldn't you, you know, just cap CEO pay at a total amount. Exactly like you've already put in place (albeit maybe don't make it so easily bypassed with bonus pay & stock issues).

Because that doesn't give any incentive to increase the wages for the poorest employees. It just means that the CEO will make the maximum allowed, minimum-wage employees will still continue to make pitiful wages with part-time hours, and the shareholders will get bigger dividend checks. Tying CEO pay to the lowest wages paid by the company means that the CEO now has a strong incentive to increase wages (and the shareholders have an equal incentive to support the wage increase so they can hire a better CEO).

 cincydooley wrote:
@Seb - I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree; I just don't think a McJob should support "living well" unless you're in management.

We're not talking about "living well", we're talking about being able to meet basic needs. And minimum-wage jobs, especially part-time minimum wage jobs where the employer deliberately keeps hours below the point where you can get any benefits, do not reach that level.

 Peregrine wrote:



We're not talking about "living well", we're talking about being able to meet basic needs. And minimum-wage jobs, especially part-time minimum wage jobs where the employer deliberately keeps hours below the point where you can get any benefits, do not reach that level.

Oh, I know we're actually talking about "living wage" here.

I don't think minimum wage, low skill, part time jobs should reach that level. They're not intended to.


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And yes, I realize this makes me a non-compassionate, insert whatever other adjective here, donkey-cave, but that's just what I believe.

I think a CEO is much more "entitled" to the exorbitant amount of money they make than some burger flipper who's job could be made obsolete by a machine or a well trained circus animal.

You realize you just compared many many people to circus animals right?

 cincydooley wrote:
I don't think minimum wage, low skill, part time jobs should reach that level. They're not intended to.

Of course they're not intended to. The companies offering them don't care if people are suffering in poverty as long as profits are good, the intent is to offer the absolute legal minimum payment to get the job done. The whole point here is that we, as a society, don't have to tolerate this kind of greedy behavior and can impose minimum wage laws to correct it.

And yes, I realize this makes me a non-compassionate, insert whatever other adjective here, donkey-cave, but that's just what I believe.

At least you're honest about it.

I think a CEO is much more "entitled" to the exorbitant amount of money they make than some burger flipper who's job could be made obsolete by a machine or a well trained circus animal.

If it's so easy to make the job obsolete then why hasn't anyone done it?

cincydooley wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Shhh. Compassion doesnt work on Conservatices.

This is at the top of your ignorant comments list. Congrats there.

@Seb - I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree; I just don't think a McJob should support "living well" unless you're in management.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
You realize you just compared many many people to circus animals right?

They're not people, they're poor!

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
You realize you just compared many many people to circus animals right?

No. I didn't. I flippantly said the act of flipping burgers could be performed by a well trained circus animal.

You'll nail down this whole reading comprehension thing one of these days.

@Peregrine - companies like amazon are already starting to with automated mail sorting systems.

@azazel - the trope "conservatives aren't compassionate" is as wrong as it is insulting. Just because I think people should have to actually earn their money doesn't make me uncompassionate.

Additionally, I've worked low paying jobs before when I was laid off in 2008 from my full time job before. Do you know what I did when the single job wasn't cutting it? I got another one. And I cut all my non essential bills. No cable. No home phone. Minimal cell phone plan. Killed my car insurance to the bare minimum. No going out to eat. No going to the movies. But then again I didn't feel like I was entitled to anything either.

 cincydooley wrote:
@Seb - I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree; I just don't think a McJob should support "living well" unless you're in management.

Really? I mean, I'm used to butting heads with people on the right wing over welfare and stuff, and while I disagree I can see how people might resent the money someone gets for not working at all... but once you're talking about someone who puts in 40 hours a week, the only question seems to be how much they can get paid before increasing it any more hurts economic activity and jobs too much. Actually arguing that they shouldn't be paid well just out of principle... well that just sounds like spite.

 cincydooley wrote:
They're not intended to.

Who says so? Was there a second secret US Constitution that lays this out as being intended, or is it just some odd gut feeling?

 sebster wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
@Seb - I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree; I just don't think a McJob should support "living well" unless you're in management.

Really? I mean, I'm used to butting heads with people on the right wing over welfare and stuff, and while I disagree I can see how people might resent the money someone gets for not working at all... but once you're talking about someone who puts in 40 hours a week, the only question seems to be how much they can get paid before increasing it any more hurts economic activity and jobs too much. Actually arguing that they shouldn't be paid well just out of principle... well that just sounds like spite.

It isn't spite. It's simply how much I believe their labor is worth.

 cincydooley wrote:
It isn't spite. It's simply how much I believe their labor is worth.

But why, other than spite, does it matter what their labor is "worth" in your opinion? What exactly is the problem if people who already obscenely wealthy have to settle for being slightly less obscenely wealthy so that their lowest-level employees can actually afford to eat?


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 cincydooley wrote:
Just because I think people should have to actually earn their money doesn't make me uncompassionate.

No, what makes you uncompassionate is your ridiculous ideas about what qualifies as "earning", as if there's some moral obligation to work hard enough before you're allowed to make enough money to eat.

Also, given your opinions about the value of hard work I'm assuming you're in favor of massive inheritance taxes so that children of wealthy parents can't just sit back and enjoy being rich without doing any work to earn their money? And will you support much harsher regulation of the banking industry so worthless parasites can't just shuffle piles of money around until they're rich, without ever doing any real work or producing anything of value to anyone besides themselves? Or does the obligation to work hard and earn money only apply to poor people?

Additionally, I've worked low paying jobs before when I was laid off in 2008 from my full time job before. Do you know what I did when the single job wasn't cutting it? I got another one. And I cut all my non essential bills. No cable. No home phone. Minimal cell phone plan. Killed my car insurance to the bare minimum. No going out to eat. No going to the movies. But then again I didn't feel like I was entitled to anything either.

Let me guess, you didn't have a family to support, did you? Try putting yourself in the position of someone with kids to support and no car (because that's a pretty big luxury if you've spent your entire life poor). Good luck working two jobs when you have to spend extra time on the bus traveling to and from those jobs. Good luck making your budget work when you have to feed those kids, and then find someone to care for them while you're at work all day. And then good luck having any sympathy for the wealthy when you're suffering through all of that so someone making millions of dollars a year can make more millions.

 Peregrine wrote:
/

Let me guess, you didn't have a family to support, did you?

I assume my wife counts? But besides that, we CHOSE not to have kids until we were more fiscally secure. Having a kid while I was working two part time minimum wage jobs would have been grossly irresponsible. Despite what 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom would have you believe, it's entirely possible to feth all the time and not get pregnant.

I have little to no sympathy for people that had kids before they could reasonably afford them. Wrap it up. Get some birth control. Planned parenthood provides that gak for free. Or just simply close your fething legs.

I empathize with the kids. That's why I donate more of my salary than I probably should to youth literacy and head start programs. That's why I volunteer at multiple high risk schools in Cincinnati. You want to actually put forth some effort and get put of the McJob? Awesome. We have programs for that so people can get some education or vocational training while utilizing social services in order to better their skill sets to get better paying jobs.

But I won't feel bad for the people that bitch and moan that their McJob doesn't pay them as much as they think they're entitled to.

 Peregrine wrote:
That all depends on your definition of "plausible", and whether CEOs are entitled to obscene levels of wealth. I see no problem with giving them a massive pay cut, the job is still going to pay well enough that people will do it.

Yes, people will do it, but there's no reason a multi-billion company like McDonald's should find itself unable to offer CEO pay equal to that offered by a multi-billion dollar company like Boeing, just because the former uses unskilled workers and the latter high skilled workers.

And it would have an effect on smaller companies, especially if you scale the cap up according to the number of employees. If McDonalds has to pay their burger flippers $15/hour because the CEO wants a bigger paycheck then the local burger place is going to have to make at least some effort to match those wages.

The CEO can't just 'want a bigger paycheck'. That isn't how it works.

But that's exactly the point: very few companies are going to employ nothing but engineers (and the hypothetical all-engineer company probably doesn't have a CEO at all), so the CEO's pay is still going to be capped by whatever minimum-wage secretary/janitor/whatever they employ. Engineers, as a general rule, aren't living in poverty or making anywhere near minimum wage so they aren't really relevant to this discussion.

Except, of course, you just set up Boeing as the engineers, and spin off the receptionist and administration in to another company, that Boeing contracts to supply front counter staff. Contract out all the installation and assembly to some other company that is now supplying a service, and bingo, lowest paid person in the company is an engineer, and the CEO is back on his stupidly high pay.

I legitimately don't understand this notion that we should cap how much someone earns.

 cincydooley wrote:
It isn't spite. It's simply how much I believe their labor is worth.

There is no 'worth' in economics. There simply is what the market will pay.

'Worth' would imply that if you removed the burger cooks from a McDonalds store, the store profitability would decrease by the amount they were paid, plus overhead %. But with no burger cooks, revenue actually goes to zero. Because the system is dependant on each kind of labour input.

And so how do we determine the relative value of each kind of labour input - with supply and demand, market forces. Which is a good system, for the most part, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with 'worth'.

 sebster wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
It isn't spite. It's simply how much I believe their labor is worth.

There is no 'worth' in economics. There simply is what the market will pay.

'Worth' would imply that if you removed the burger cooks from a McDonalds store, the store profitability would decrease by the amount they were paid, plus overhead %. But with no burger cooks, revenue actually goes to zero. Because the system is dependant on each kind of labour input.

And so how do we determine the relative value of each kind of labour input - with supply and demand, market forces. Which is a good system, for the most part, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with 'worth'.

You're absolutely right. I'd argue that without a minimum wage you'd find people willing to work a McJob for less than $7.65 an hour.

As it stands, the market is forced to pay that minimum wage.

 cincydooley wrote:
I legitimately don't understand this notion that we should cap how much someone earns.

I understand why it exists - people witness the pay of upper management getting bigger and bigger, outpacing regular income, and they want to put a check on that. Makes a kind of sense to put a limit on that.

But I don't really agree with it, because in the first part if a company want to pay someone a lot of money, well there's stuff all you can do about it, they will find a way to pay them. So the caps that are in place just don't work.

And the bigger point is that it's really looking at the wrong end of the scale. The problem isn't with how much the top gets paid, but how little the bottom gets paid. Focusing there makes so much more sense.


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 cincydooley wrote:
You're absolutely right. I'd argue that without a minimum wage you'd find people willing to work a McJob for less than $7.65 an hour.

As it stands, the market is forced to pay that minimum wage.

Yeah, labour rates determined by market forces with a decent minimum wage and a decent set of tax rates isn't perfect, but it's the best system anyone has thought of so far. Of course, there's plenty of debate about what the minimum wage should be, and what the tax rates should be, which ultimately needs to be determined more by stupid amounts of econometrics and not a bunch of people on a wargaming board

 sebster wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
I legitimately don't understand this notion that we should cap how much someone earns.

I understand why it exists - people witness the pay of upper management getting bigger and bigger, outpacing regular income, and they want to put a check on that. Makes a kind of sense to put a limit on that.

But I don't really agree with it, because in the first part if a company want to pay someone a lot of money, well there's stuff all you can do about it, they will find a way to pay them. So the caps that are in place just don't work.

And the bigger point is that it's really looking at the wrong end of the scale. The problem isn't with how much the top gets paid, but how little the bottom gets paid. Focusing there makes so much more sense.

This. So much this, this is the major issue. However, I really question why a job such at McDonald's outside of being at least an Assistant Manager should provide a living wage. The current minimum wage does border on criminal...I agree that increase is necessary, but a living wage for an entry level, unskilled position? That's really stretching it. There is also an issue of defining a living wage and it fluctuates greatly based on locale. In most of Texas $10/hour for 40 hours a week would be a living wage, but it's going to require a skintight budget and you will be struggling to save anything.

 sebster wrote:
Yes, people will do it, but there's no reason a multi-billion company like McDonald's should find itself unable to offer CEO pay equal to that offered by a multi-billion dollar company like Boeing, just because the former uses unskilled workers and the latter high skilled workers.

I think you misunderstand, the cap isn't based on the average salary, it's based on the lowest-salary positions. Since Boeing employs janitors/secretaries/etc that make a lot less money than their high-skill workers the CEO would still be subject to the same pay restrictions. The only way to avoid them would be for Boeing to pay all of their low-end jobs the same kind of salary that their high-skill workers get, and that would accomplish the goal of increasing minimum wage.

The CEO can't just 'want a bigger paycheck'. That isn't how it works.

Yeah, I'm sure the CEO's desire to get more money isn't relevant at all...

Except, of course, you just set up Boeing as the engineers, and spin off the receptionist and administration in to another company, that Boeing contracts to supply front counter staff. Contract out all the installation and assembly to some other company that is now supplying a service, and bingo, lowest paid person in the company is an engineer, and the CEO is back on his stupidly high pay.

And then the government agency in charge of overseeing minimum wage laws says "no, you're not fooling anyone" and rules that the "contractor" is functionally part of Boeing. The only way to avoid that would be to legitimately create multiple separate companies which compete with the rest of the industry for the Boeing contract, don't pay Boeing any share of their profits, offer their services to other companies (including Boeing's rivals), etc. And I don't think the shareholders are going to be willing to put up with that just so the upper management can get bigger paychecks.


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 cincydooley wrote:
I'd argue that without a minimum wage you'd find people willing to work a McJob for less than $7.65 an hour.

Of course you could. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would rather work a McJob for less if the alternative is starving to death. But the question here is whether it's morally acceptable to allow businesses to exploit them, especially when the businesses are (at least in part) responsible for creating a system in which that desperation exists in the first place.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:



We're not talking about "living well", we're talking about being able to meet basic needs. And minimum-wage jobs, especially part-time minimum wage jobs where the employer deliberately keeps hours below the point where you can get any benefits, do not reach that level.

Oh, I know we're actually talking about "living wage" here.

I don't think minimum wage, low skill, part time jobs should reach that level. They're not intended to.


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And yes, I realize this makes me a non-compassionate, insert whatever other adjective here, donkey-cave, but that's just what I believe.

I think a CEO is much more "entitled" to the exorbitant amount of money they make than some burger flipper who's job could be made obsolete by a machine or a well trained circus animal.

Everyone needs to work and some people are more able than others, better educated or have had more opportunities in life. That's just how it rolls, but even the lowest jobs in society are needed, burger flippers and cleaners. A minimum wage should prevent exploitation. Even burger flippers deserve a minimum wage. The minimum wage isn't exorbitant so whether the CEO is 'entitled' to earn exorbitant amounts seems silly. Unless you believe that giving anything more than minimum wage to a burger flipper is lavishing them with undeserved money.

Are you entitled to cheap burgers? If not why then not pay more so that the people working in the store can have more? There's an element of selfishness here, what their labor is worth vs saving you money. His much is a burger worth? The answer, like wages, is whatever you can get away with.

People have to work, they simply have to, in order to get by, it's not a convenience. If you paid McJobs much lower, you'd still fill them. Because people need something more than nothing. That doesn't mean their wages are 'what their labor is worth', it's what they can get away with being paid. The alternatives are that senior staff take less, or that prices go up. Oh no! We can't have that! One results in the public having to pay more, the other is that the CEO has to have less than what he's entitled to, instead of being entitled to give less to those at the bottom.

The minimum wages is there to protect society. People will always be needed for minimum wages jobs, and as long as there's a surplus of people looking for jobs, employers will be able to exploit the situation by taking the people desperate to take what they're offering. This is exploitation. Whatever a burger is worth, the profits pay those in the company. It's just that the senior staff pay themselves a lot because they have that control, and those lower down have little say. It's not about paying what a job is 'worth'.

Anyway, I find all the sneering about McJobs a bit silly. Sure, most people do use them as temporary jobs. But many jobs are minimum wage, like those packing stuff in a factory, or the cleaner that tidies your office each day, or maybe the staff at your children's nursery.

 trexmeyer wrote:
I agree that increase is necessary, but a living wage for an entry level, unskilled position? That's really stretching it.

Why? There are many people for whom that it life. Through many reasons they never get beyone "unskilled". The very nature of the pyramid of employees, with many at the bottom and less and less as you go up, means that some of the less able are always going to be stuck at the bottom. It is grossly unfair that many people live there lives in abject poverty, whilst working, so that a few at the top can live in unimaginable wealth.

Take Walmart and the Walton family. Some people will spend their whole lives living one day to the next wondering if they can afford to eat and pay the rent next week just so that the Waltons live in a world most of us, even the well paid, can never imaging. That, to me, is wrong.

The problem, in my eyes, is that in large companies CEOs and owners have become completely disconnected with the reality of employees at the bottom.

The problem is that many time, CEOs, Board Directers and other such high positions get million $ raises when they already have so much money they can barely spend it all, when there are layoffs, hour cuts, and cuts in benefits for lower employees. For some reason. that 1million$ raise cant go spread among the workers.
And about the "Mcjob" not being meant to support a family? Well, yeah. But not all Minimum Wage jobs are McJobs. Some hare skilled gardeners, Actual cooks(I dont mean burger flippers, I mean things like the guys who cook your food at a resturant) They are jobs that very much require skill and other such things. Companies will pay the lowest wage they possibly can. if there was no Min we would all be making 9 cents a day.

 trexmeyer wrote:
This. So much this, this is the major issue. However, I really question why a job such at McDonald's outside of being at least an Assistant Manager should provide a living wage. The current minimum wage does border on criminal...I agree that increase is necessary, but a living wage for an entry level, unskilled position? That's really stretching it. There is also an issue of defining a living wage and it fluctuates greatly based on locale. In most of Texas $10/hour for 40 hours a week would be a living wage, but it's going to require a skintight budget and you will be struggling to save anything.

Thing is, if someone works 40 hours a week, I think they ought to have an income that lets them live modestly without having to worry about how they're going to pay their bills. I think in your country, my country and all the other countries with highly developed economies and extreme amounts of wealth, that's really just a basic thing we should offer people - 'if you're willing to work 40 hours a week, you'll earn enough to live'.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure the CEO's desire to get more money isn't relevant at all...

I desire to get more money as well. But that doesn't just translate in to more pay because very fething obviously that isn't how it works. And the same is true for the CEO, who has to establish to the board that his performance justifies a pay increase.

Now, that gets complicated as the relationship between the board and the CEO often stops being at arm's length. But to describe it as simply as you did is just wrong.

And then the government agency in charge of overseeing minimum wage laws says "no, you're not fooling anyone" and rules that the "contractor" is functionally part of Boeing.

Good luck with that.

The only way to avoid that would be to legitimately create multiple separate companies which compete with the rest of the industry for the Boeing contract, don't pay Boeing any share of their profits, offer their services to other companies (including Boeing's rivals), etc.

You have absolutely no idea how corporate structures work, do you? Companies create seperate entities all the time just as I described, as there are often significant overhead savings to found in quarantining certain kinds of operations - ie it is wasteful to provide the same level of HR support to staff who work in corporate HQ that you would provide to employees who work six weeks out of eight on your offshore rig.

And I don't think the shareholders are going to be willing to put up with that just so the upper management can get bigger paychecks.

To the extent that shareholders have power to control the pay of the board... they have that power right now. Where the shareholders lack that power right now (dominance or minority and passive institutional investors), then they will still lack that power when the company establishes a corporate structure to sidestep a CEO pay cap.

On the question of why a burger flipper should have a living wage. It is really self-evident, because the burger flipper is alive therefore they need a living wage in order to continue to live. If you do not pay them a "living" wage then they cease to live and can no longer flip burgers. Pretty obvious stuff isn't it?

This of course assumes that said burger-flipper isn't a machine, in which case no living wage is needed, only maintenance costs. Which I guess is a type of living wage with a different name.

Here's the thing that gets me about the living wage arguments...

Isn’t it a more equitable system, that some enforceable positive duty to provide folks with enough stuff to lead a life... that ALL OF US, together share this burdensome duty, rather than just the employer?

That is why we have the welfare system in the first place.

Why should the employer, specifically, be the one that has to bear the burden and potentially lose all this money to support the living wage model?

Furthermore, how would you and at whatever level you consider a decent living wage?