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 JohnHwangDD wrote:
An E-3 PFC has a base pay of $21.6k annually.

An E-5 Sergeant with 4 years experience has a base pay of $30k.

I'm sorry, but no burger flipper deserves as much as an an E-3, to say nothing of an E-5.

If you're an adult working for minimum wage at a zero-skill job, you don't deserve the wages of a professional soldier who puts his life on the line 24 hours a day.

But don't those soldiers also receive housing, food, medical in addition to their pay? That would make their effective wages considerably higher as a lot of extra costs are being carried by the military, where a civilian has to cover those thing out of that $30k pay.

One of my issues isn't just the whole ridiculous 15 USD minimum wage but (sorry to say it) some jobs that get more money for doing less work. I know waiters and waitresses that rake in the money and i get stuck doing minimum wage work for 3 years at a factory making parts around the clock and sometimes needing to make deadlines. I'd kill for a good tip. I can't say i see every job as being all equal and fair but i guess that's just the way of the world and how it'll always be.

 Eilif wrote:
I just wanted to add that if minimum wage was $15, I'd be willing to work for $13 if that brought me membership in a union, and some additional benefits such as health care, paid vacation, etc....

You would be a rare bird indeed.

Lots and lots of people don't think about their future (pensions, annuity, etc.) and would rather take more money in their pocket for the immediate gratification... this is a problem that unions have; too many of our members care more about getting an extra dollar an hour in their check than they do about securing their future.

 cincydooley wrote:
Am i wrong in thinking a few unions wanted to be exempt from the ACA as well? Or am I misrembering that?

You are indeed correct:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/07/15/labor-leaders-obamacare-will-shatter-their-health-benefits-cause-nightmare-scenarios/

Now they're trying to slime their way out of something else they foisted on others.

Raise it to 15. Who cares? In a few decades those jobs largely won't exist.

Most of our jobs won't.

Hopefully we figure out a way to handle that, but I know which way I'm betting.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
An E-3 PFC has a base pay of $21.6k annually.

An E-5 Sergeant with 4 years experience has a base pay of $30k.

I'm sorry, but no burger flipper deserves as much as an an E-3, to say nothing of an E-5.

If you're an adult working for minimum wage at a zero-skill job, you don't deserve the wages of a professional soldier who puts his life on the line 24 hours a day.

While I largely agree with you and some people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to intangibles (positive and negative). Any discussion of military pay (the money that goes into the account every month) has to include BAH and BAS, so that E-3 in your example assuming he's single and living in LA is making roughly another 22k a year.

 Eilif wrote:
To top it off a Military family is likely in an area with a much lower cost-of living than an urban min-wager. It's really not a fair comparison.

As a former soldier I agree with this.... Places like Oak Grove, KY or Hopkinsville, KY have much much lower cost of living rates than a place like Louisville (keeping it in state), or on the other side of the border, Clarksville is "cheaper" than Nashville.... Some of this is actually artificially low, IMO.

Take for instance, the housing market in Clarksville... the vast majority of houses are affordable on "most" soldiers BAH, and rental rates are about the same (though some places are seriously ridiculously over priced).

In places like JBLM, where my wife is stationed now, we're receiving significantly higher BAH rates and such, because the cost of living is so much higher due to idiotic state taxes, Tacoma's "big city costs" and a housing market that is fairly inflated due to the number of "high paying" jobs at Boeing, Amazon, etc.

Is there also a "combat pay" or hazard pay or whatever you get when you are actually in a combat zone putting your life on the line?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

If you're an adult working for minimum wage at a zero-skill job, you don't deserve the wages of a professional soldier who puts his life on the line 24 hours a day.

Most professional soldiers don't put their lives on the line at all, let alone 24 hours per day.

Sauce, dude: You've been utterly stellar this whole thread man. 10/10.

Now say something about wiener dogs!

Nope, I do Chihuahuas.
And no, I firmly believe the best way to help people isnt by effectevely making a dollar worth less.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
An E-3 PFC has a base pay of $21.6k annually.

An E-5 Sergeant with 4 years experience has a base pay of $30k.

I'm sorry, but no burger flipper deserves as much as an an E-3, to say nothing of an E-5.

If you're an adult working for minimum wage at a zero-skill job, you don't deserve the wages of a professional soldier who puts his life on the line 24 hours a day.

When they pay different tax rates (and with on-base commissaries often providing goods at cheaper than what someone going to the store would get, particularly if they don't have to pay state/local sales taxes) and have subsidized/provided housing and often food, medical care, and more, on top of potential signing/re-signing bonuses, they've got a lot more disposable income than the people we're talking about.

Likewise, a soldier is not putting his life on the line 24 hours a day. Only if deployed on a combat mission, in which case they get hazard pay on top of their normal pay, and only a very small minority of servicemen *ever* face enemy fire or fire their weapons in anger, many never leave the 'states. Otherwise they're not in any more danger than any other job that involves physical activity.

 sebster wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
And what exactly is "real work"?

Real work is an idea invented by people who want to gak on those underneath them. That's basically all there is to it.

I've spent approximately 7 lifetimes arguing with people on this forum about minimum wage, trying to dismantle one bad economic argument after the next. Only recently did I realise that people didn't give up on their bad economic arguments because they couldn't see the holes, it's because they didn't give a gak. The economic arguments are just a veneer to a basic underlying need to identify somebody beneath them in the social order, and to be contemptuous of that person.

Indeed. I mean, I understand there are some arguments against a minimum wage (I like to think that holding both a B.S. in Economics and a Master's in Business Administration that I have some idea of these sorts of things) but I think they largely only apply in certain circumstance. Most of the rest of the time, it's a whole lot of "well I didn't get that, they shouldn't either" without wanting to look at the economic realities.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Nope, I do Chihuahuas.
And no, I firmly believe the best way to help people isnt by effectevely making a dollar worth less.

What?

Sorry, no. That serviceman is on call 24 hours a day, period, and their pay in no way reflects that if you're saying a non-skilled person is "worth" $15/hr.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I'm sure no matter how good the Trainer, you can't train a 15 yr old to weld pipes in a week.

I took metal shop class as a 15 year old and was able to quickly get a "prettier" weld than the teacher, anecdotal, yes, but true nonetheless.

And while the person wouldn't know WHY they are doing it, I'd bet you could train someone to do what most scientists do, as far as loading up testing equipment and running tests, etc.

You could train a "surgeon" where to cut, and how.... Yes, we place value on knowing "what and why" I mean hell... look at medicine pre-20th century, pretty much "anyone" with the stomach for blood and guts, and a couple books was able to be a "Doctor"

To weld them, maybe (good pipeline welders are hard to come by and make lots of dough though, so I'm not too sure about that). To inspect the welds takes a lot longer. About two years before someone's ready to go in the field and inspect things on his own. And only then will you begin to see which of these inspectors understands what he/she is doing and which of them is just pushing buttons the way they were taught without understanding why they do what they do.
But then, I make waaaaaay more than $15 an hour, so that jives with what sauceman said.

Even so, I disagree with the assertion that difficulty is the only yardstick to be used to determine what deserves a good wage. Hard work, whether it's shovelling manure or brainsweat should be rewarded with (at least) being able to pay your bills.
I'm on the fence whether burgerflipping falls under that category.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I got a better idea.
Go out, get real jobs and stop asking me to pay 12$ a hamburger so you can get new iphone15.
And just so you all know, NO im not kidding this is how I feel. We shouldnt be paying people 15$ an hour to flip burgers.
15$ is for people who do real work

Yeah, screw people trying to make a living off of gakky jobs. They don't deserve a halfway decent lifestyle because the thing they do is worse than the thing i do.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Sorry, no. That serviceman is on call 24 hours a day, period,

O_o um...only for a very few select MOS's, the overwhelmingly vast majority are not "on call" 24 hours a day, unless you're counting the highly unlikely scenario of a major military act by an aggressor state a-la Pearl Harbor. In that case...maybe (even then, it took 6 months or more to really mobilize and start major offensive deployments)?. Those are also rarer-than-once-in-a-lifetime events. Even Sept 11th didn't result in an immediate mass mobilization across all branches and roles.

and their pay in no way reflects that if you're saying a non-skilled person is "worth" $15/hr.

The long term economic realities of self-sustainment beg to differ. If your workforce can't afford to live and commute to your workplace, you're workforce won't exist forever. Likewise, much of what's being done is simply shifting that cost of living gap from the employer to the state, the state essentially subsidizing the employer's unwillingness to pay a higher wage by providing food stamps, medicaid, housing allowances, etc to their labor force.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I think I have probably been one of those opponents you have argued against about Min. wage....

As time has progressed, I am now of the opinion that it isn't so much the minimum wage that's the problem, it's the "where is all the new money going" and that answer: the top 1% of the 1%. IMO, the problem isn't the minimum wage worker, or the middle class person who buys stuff needlessly, it's the "Walton's" of the world who, when laws and rates are adjusted, adjust themselves to rake in even more money, then rig the system so that instead of paying people for work, they rely on the government assistance programs.

Pretty much. It gets more complex because the filtering of money upwards isn't as simple as a conspiracy by the very rich, it's largely a product of changes to the economy that have developed naturally. That doesn't mean we can't do anything about it, of course.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Nope, I do Chihuahuas.
And no, I firmly believe the best way to help people isnt by effectevely making a dollar worth less.

You can firmly believe it all you want, but it's gibberish.

I'll be honest here saying that raising the minimum wage is not the right way to help the less fortunate.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Indeed. I mean, I understand there are some arguments against a minimum wage (I like to think that holding both a B.S. in Economics and a Master's in Business Administration that I have some idea of these sorts of things) but I think they largely only apply in certain circumstance. Most of the rest of the time, it's a whole lot of "well I didn't get that, they shouldn't either" without wanting to look at the economic realities.

Pretty much. There are arguments against raising minimum wage that are strong - a loss of jobs being by far the strongest - but that argument doesn't automatically apply to every single market. So people just automatically arguing against any increase to minimum wage in any market are basically letting their ideology form their conclusions for them.

And that's before we get on to arguments that never work, like the inflation thing hotsauceman has hinted at.

Once you start seeing this, over and over again, and see the lack of interest in actually exploring how those economic ideas actually work (or don't work), then it's pretty clear that, simply, economics has nothing to do with it. People are just instinctively railing against the idea people with little income might get a little more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sienisoturi wrote:
I'll be honest here saying that raising the minimum wage is not the right way to help the less fortunate.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Depends on market conditions.

Arguing that it never is, or always is, is just hopelessly simplistic.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Sorry, no. That serviceman is on call 24 hours a day, period,

O_o um...only for a very few select MOS's, the overwhelmingly vast majority are not "on call" 24 hours a day, unless you're counting the highly unlikely scenario of a major military act by an aggressor state a-la Pearl Harbor. In that case...maybe (even then, it took 6 months or more to really mobilize and start major offensive deployments)?. Those are also rarer-than-once-in-a-lifetime events. Even Sept 11th didn't result in an immediate mass mobilization across all branches and roles.

and their pay in no way reflects that if you're saying a non-skilled person is "worth" $15/hr.

The long term economic realities of self-sustainment beg to differ. If your workforce can't afford to live and commute to your workplace, you're workforce won't exist forever. Likewise, much of what's being done is simply shifting that cost of living gap from the employer to the state, the state essentially subsidizing the employer's unwillingness to pay a higher wage by providing food stamps, medicaid, housing allowances, etc to their labor force.

The fact of the matter is that they can be activated at any time, for any duration. That's the deal.

If labor becomes scarce, then wages will naturally rise as if guided by an invisible hand. That is why a burger flipper in Manhattan makes more than a burger flipper in Des Moines. No minimum wage is necessary.

However, the abomination of a minimum wage only serves to reduce employment at the margins. $15/hr will definitely do that.

If you want a lower partcipation in the workforce, by all means, raise that minimum wage. That's what Obama has done, effectively driving the US workforce to the lowest level of civilian labor force participation in more than two decades. Keep raising that minimum wage, and even more jobs will disappear.

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If labor becomes scarce, then wages will naturally rise as if guided by an invisible hand. That is why a burger flipper in Manhattan makes more than a burger flipper in Des Moines. No minimum wage is necessary.

Thankyou for bringing us the latest economic principles that the 19th century has to offer. Economic analysis has moved on quite a bit since then. Go read about bargaining power.

However, the abomination of a minimum wage only serves to reduce employment at the margins. $15/hr will definitely do that.

If you want a lower partcipation in the workforce, by all means, raise that minimum wage. That's what Obama has done, effectively driving the US workforce to the lowest level of civilian labor force participation in more than two decades. Keep raising that minimum wage, and even more jobs will disappear.

That doesn't make sense, even by the damand & supply analysis you attempted above. I mean, think about it. If you put up minimum wage, then people are going to be more willing to work, while companies are going to be less likely to employ. So the primary impact would be on the unemployment rate - which under Obama has dropped from a peak of 10% to now below 6%. If minimum wage changes were having a negative national impact, then you'd see it immediately in the unemployment rate. The only reason to go looking at the participation rate is because the unemployment rate isn't telling you what you want to see.

In case you're interested, the change in workforce participation is driven by the aging population, and increased skill expectations meaning more people are extending their education before joining the workforce. It's a ten year trend that's expected to continue for another ten years, and has precisely feth all with any economic policy in place today. In fact, the current decline has been expected and talked about since at least the 1990s, trying to tie it to any current or past political policy is inane.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


The fact of the matter is that they can be activated at any time, for any duration. That's the deal.

In theory, sure. In practice? It takes days, weeks, even months to activate and mobilize many military units, and again, aside from specific MOS's, we're talking something that may happen once a century historically, as most others will typically be warned that they're at risk of being called up long before it actually happens.

If labor becomes scarce, then wages will naturally rise as if guided by an invisible hand.

As someone who has two degrees in this sort of thing and has worked in just about every type of organization out there (government, higher education, government contractors, multinational corporations, single-owner small businesses, non-profits, etc), I can tell you that this sort of statement is absolutely bunk, there are all sorts of reasons why wages may not change and that will prevent the forces of supply and demand acting as they otherwise would. The fact that Employers are dealing with Employees on a 1 for 1 basis and a gross imbalance of bargaining power, instead of as a collective whole is part of it. Social attitudes and expectations, collusion (explicit and implicit) amongst employers, population self-selection, etc all play a role. The idea of a pure, unregulated "invisible hand" directing markets in a perfect way is a fantasy.

One will notice for instance, that In-n-Out burger pays significantly more than minimum wage even for starting employees (even if it's not $15/hr), and they don't have higher prices or lower growth than major chains. One will notice that McDonald's, originator of the term "McJob" for low skilled and low paid labor, is experiencing extreme financial difficulty.

That is why a burger flipper in Manhattan makes more than a burger flipper in Des Moines. No minimum wage is necessary.

Do you have a source for that claim? Because a bunch of NYC (including Manhattan) fast food workers just went on strike and they weren't even making $9 or $10/hr in most cases, which would put them roughly on par with Des Moines minimum wage.

However, the abomination of a minimum wage only serves to reduce employment at the margins. $15/hr will definitely do that.

And yet largely it's never done that except largely in cases where automation was an alternative, typically where it was already going to happen anyway and simply sped up that process by a couple of years.

If you want a lower partcipation in the workforce, by all means, raise that minimum wage. That's what Obama has done, effectively driving the US workforce to the lowest level of civilian labor force participation in more than two decades. Keep raising that minimum wage, and even more jobs will disappear.


http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

That's a somewhat misleading graph there.a very small percentage decrease in labor force particupation portrayed graphically as a massive plummet.

That has largely nothing to do with minimum wage (which has risen relatively little or not at all in many places). There are a whole hell of a lot of far more explanatory factors at work there. The aging of the US population and retirement of the Baby Boomers (living proportionally longer than previous generationsr), people staying in school longer or returning to school, and things of that nature have a far larger impact than minimum wage.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I got a better idea.
Go out, get real jobs and stop asking me to pay 12$ a hamburger so you can get new iphone15.
And just so you all know, NO im not kidding this is how I feel. We shouldnt be paying people 15$ an hour to flip burgers.
15$ is for people who do real work

Sheer snobbishness. A job is a job. You don't have a right to cheap burgers, they aren't an essential service. How about you earn more if you can't occcasionally afford $12 for a burger? Jeeze, you should try living in the UK or other European countries where the cost of living on essentials like food and fuel is higher. But you whine about being forced to pay $12 for a McD. What someone spends their money on isn't your concern. So what if a kid lives with parents and is saving for a new phone? According to you, all McD workers should be paid less because their parents subsidise their living, so you can continue to have cheap burgers?

A 'real job' is just something invented by people who want to look down on the work of others and doesn't value their time, even those they know the work needs doing. I suppose you look down on the cleaning staff at your workplace or local hospital or school too too, because anyone can use a mop right? So hours of their life each day handling trash and wiping floors isn't worth squat because anyone can be shown how to use a mop so they deserve to earn rubbish.

Unskilled work does not mean the work has no value. No one is making you shop at McDonalds. And it's typical you paint the picture of the minimum wage worker as a kid flipping burgers and saving for an iPhone. Most minimum wage workers are people you don't see, sweeping floors and working on assembly lines. And they're earning money to put food on the table and keep the lights on. They can't go out and get a 'proper job' because they're unskilled. But their work is valuable, you'd soon whine if all the rubbish and dirt piled up at work and the toilets went uncleaned. You make me sick.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I got a better idea.
Go out, get real jobs and stop asking me to pay 12$ a hamburger so you can get new iphone15.
And just so you all know, NO im not kidding this is how I feel. We shouldnt be paying people 15$ an hour to flip burgers.
15$ is for people who do real work

Sheer snobbishness. A job is a job. You don't have a right to cheap burgers, they aren't an essential service. How about you earn more if you can't occcasionally afford $12 for a burger? Jeeze, you should try living in the UK or other European countries where the cost of living on essentials like food and fuel is higher. But you whine about being forced to pay $12 for a McD. What someone spends their money on isn't your concern. So what if a kid lives with parents and is saving for a new phone? According to you, all McD workers should be paid less because their parents subsidise their living, so you can continue to have cheap burgers?

A 'real job' is just something invented by people who want to look down on the work of others and doesn't value their time, even those they know the work needs doing. I suppose you look down on the cleaning staff at your workplace or local hospital or school too too, because anyone can use a mop right? So hours of their life each day handling trash and wiping floors isn't worth squat because anyone can be shown how to use a mop so they deserve to earn rubbish.

Unskilled work does not mean the work has no value. No one is making you shop at McDonalds. And it's typical you paint the picture of the minimum wage worker as a kid flipping burgers and saving for an iPhone. Most minimum wage workers are people you don't see, sweeping floors and working on assembly lines. And they're earning money to put food on the table and keep the lights on. They can't go out and get a 'proper job' because they're unskilled. But their work is valuable, you'd soon whine if all the rubbish and dirt piled up at work and the toilets went uncleaned. You make me sick.

Here here!

Unskilled work is often hard tiering work. It may not take long to learn, although by all accounts it takes longer than a week to learn the job in McDonalds. It may not be graduate level work, but getting each job right, learning how to cook each thing correctly, work the tills, time manager etc, does take time to gain the skills. It is also a hot, cramped, high speed, stressful environment in any kitchen and on top of that you have to deal with the public who will kick off because they have two gherkins rather than three or their fries are more salted than they would like. I have never done it myself (I did my public facing purgatory in a shop) but I have known people who have, and whilst they did enjoy it, mostly due to the team work, it is most defiantly not easy and is "real work".

It is disgusting how people can look down on others like that. Just because something is unskilled does not make it not "real work".

 dogma wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

If you're an adult working for minimum wage at a zero-skill job, you don't deserve the wages of a professional soldier who puts his life on the line 24 hours a day.

Most professional soldiers don't put their lives on the line at all, let alone 24 hours per day.

I feel a little insulted about this honestly. Not what you said, dogma, but what JohnHwangDD said. You know, I worked as a CNA for years. I have worked in nursing homes and hospitals. It is a very fulfilling and difficult job. I liked it a lot and I often went home feeling like I helped people. There were also days when I went home with other peoples body fluid on my scrubs. That was most days honestly. CNAs in most areas, I know for sure in mine, make minimum wage or barely above it at best. These are people that have to deal with diseases on a regular basis and on top of that, they work in a job where violence is almost commonplace. If you go in to nursing, there is a very very very high risk of being assaulted in one form or another. I have been threatened, punched, spit on, I have had jugs of urine thrown at me. I have had to deal with hostile patients with diseases you cannot get rid of and they will kill you. I have had to care for inmates while two armed guards stood over me.

But, you only need to take a 6 month course to be a CNA so I mean, they should probably only make $9 an hour. Right?

I am just going to leave this here. Maybe go take a breather.

Article Above wrote:Health-care workers experience the most nonfatal workplace violence compared to other professions by a wide margin, with attacks on them accounting for almost 70 percent of all nonfatal workplace assaults causing days away from work in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Yet as the article states the unions were campaigning that no one should have a sub-minimum wage, yet they are directly acting against that. Surely if these are separate, as you claim, them the union could have both. And why the last minute carving out of an exemption for themselves instead of taking this position from the start?

We don't know if this is directly acting against it. I haven't read the proposal or the new minimum wage laws that the city passed. All I am saying is it's probably a little more complicated that it's being currently presented, which is "unions are hypocrites."

Of course, that may end up being the case or they may have legitimate reason for this proposal.

Useful to know, thank you. You say that this "may" affect the wage rate and packet rate. Has this happened elsewhere?

I don't know, just passing along information. It all depends on the verbiage in the laws/proposals in question.

Comments like this don't really help the discussion.

You know what else doesn't help? All the other baseless, uninformed opinions being trotted out. However, thank you for pointing my accurate observation out as being the thing that doesn't help the "conversation."

Scooty... I'm willing to listen, but c'mon man, it looks disingenuous on the surface dude.

My "backhanded" comment stems from my thinking that, if he's successful in getting that exemption, then it'll be easier for these Union shops to work with private industries (ie, retail/restarunts/etc..) to encourage new unions, in the effort to keep overall labor costs down.

He's asking for "special snowflake" treatments.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:
Am i wrong in thinking a few unions wanted to be exempt from the ACA as well? Or am I misrembering that?

Nope. Not wrong.

They're going to get majorly ding'ed by the Cadelliac Plan Tax, if nothing changes.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I got a better idea.
Go out, get real jobs and stop asking me to pay 12$ a hamburger so you can get new iphone15.
And just so you all know, NO im not kidding this is how I feel. We shouldnt be paying people 15$ an hour to flip burgers.
15$ is for people who do real work

And what exactly is "real work"?

If you're familiar at all with LA, you'd know that even at $15/hr, that's still rather questionable as a living wage in terms of just being able to afford rent, food, gas, utilities, and car insurance if you're working full time (much less the ability to purchase a car if need be), in fact, it probably won't even cover that (given that the average 1 bedroom apartment price in LA is $1800+/month, and electricity is probably another ~$100 on top of that alone, $300 easy if you're running AC when it's 90*-100* outside for months at a time), it's about the minimum you'd really need for each individual in a two-income household. When I first moved out on my own in San Diego, between me and my roommates, we easily were making comfortably into six figures for household income, and were very definitely not enjoying the lifestyle that most people assume with that sort of household income.

I think our combined household expenses, between rent, gas & insurance on three cars, food, and utilities was ~4500/month. Just the barebones basics(food, fuel, mandated insurance, water & electricity).

That's not including extras like entertainment, healthcare co-pays, girlfriends, Internet/Cable, cell phone bills, videogames, new iphones, vacations, emergencies (e.g. car breaks down), savings, alcohol, Warhammer, parties, eating out, etc.

Split three ways, that's ~$1500/month. If you're making $15/hr, after taxes, and with those expenses, you're looking at having ~$300 a month for literally everything but the basics in life. You want an internet connection, a cell phone? Bump it down to $200/month, or about $6-7/day.

If that's all "real work" gets you, someone's getting a raw deal.

Where the do you live in LA where a one bedroom is $1800 a month? pro-tip working folk don't live there. They live in the Inland Empire.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Sorry, no. That serviceman is on call 24 hours a day, period,

O_o um...only for a very few select MOS's, the overwhelmingly vast majority are not "on call" 24 hours a day, unless you're counting the highly unlikely scenario of a major military act by an aggressor state a-la Pearl Harbor. In that case...maybe (even then, it took 6 months or more to really mobilize and start major offensive deployments)?. Those are also rarer-than-once-in-a-lifetime events. Even Sept 11th didn't result in an immediate mass mobilization across all branches and roles.

and their pay in no way reflects that if you're saying a non-skilled person is "worth" $15/hr.

The long term economic realities of self-sustainment beg to differ. If your workforce can't afford to live and commute to your workplace, you're workforce won't exist forever. Likewise, much of what's being done is simply shifting that cost of living gap from the employer to the state, the state essentially subsidizing the employer's unwillingness to pay a higher wage by providing food stamps, medicaid, housing allowances, etc to their labor force.

24/7/365 three numbers that are true for every single active duty person. Are you really using WWII mobilization timelines in a discussion about 2015 military readiness. I can't even begin to tell you how much that last sentence misses the reality of Sept 12 even if technically factually accurate

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
An E-3 PFC has a base pay of $21.6k annually.

An E-5 Sergeant with 4 years experience has a base pay of $30k.

I'm sorry, but no burger flipper deserves as much as an an E-3, to say nothing of an E-5.

If you're an adult working for minimum wage at a zero-skill job, you don't deserve the wages of a professional soldier who puts his life on the line 24 hours a day.

Well put.

Furthermore the living wage argument is irrelevant. There are plenty of big boy jobs that pay better and require little education, they just aren't as cushy as fast food (and before you ask, yes as a teenager I worked fast food jobs. They are cushy jobs that should be filled by high school students who live at home, not lazy adults.