Minimum wage increase

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We've been down this road before in discussions here.
Our economy (in all it's parts) is based on an industrial model that doesn't exist in America anymore. Politicians and thinkers (not to be confused with each other) are struggling to figure out how to grow an economy where human labor isn't valued ( can you spell "automation"? How about "robot"?). I'm afraid the old rules may not apply anymore.
 
We have been down the road a few times and don’t let your vision be blurred by your perception of reality. We have always embraced automation this country invented it in fact. Automation including robots made more jobs than it ever replaced. What it did was allow the cost of a product to come down within the grasp of the average man. Automobiles stopped being hand crafted 100 years ago and without automation we would still be riding around with horses and carts. There has to be something created out of nothing for there to be growth and prosperity.

I work for a company that employs 300,000 people in 170 countries and was based in manufacturing and still is. The plant I work in employs about 5000 people and the trickle down effect into the rest of the community is enormous. We have all kinds of automation and robots and the whole deal keeps this town from going down the drain at least a 50 mile radius of ground zero would feel the impact if and when they leave. 90% of those 5000 people are welding or stamping steel screwing pipes together and wiring devices. They are making very high wages and have excellent benefits all as a result of the business being located here. The company respects the workers and the workers are glad to have the jobs. 40 years ago when I started there were 16,000 employs at this location. The demand for product hasn’t lessened over that time at all in fact we now supply 3 times what we did then. What happened was the rest of the world caught on and rules and regulations some good some not so good and taxes, forced outsourcing and alternate methods to supply the demands while keeping prices down. I cant ever remember one job going away because a robot took it or some automation when the plant was in a growing mode. In fact when we would send work to Asia or Mexico they declined taking the automation in favor of super old time methods as they wanted to make more jobs as ill thought out as that was at the time.

We just opened a new mirror of the one I work at, plant in Texas. The main reason being the business friendly climate in that state combined with a non union work force that is hungry for the American dream. I don’t blame any company for doing what it has to do to stay completive if not then all jobs are lost.

There is a notion that companies left to their own will ruin the world and kill the workers and produce the worst products. I have never seen that. When there is competition just the reverse happens. There is a place for government regulations and I don’t know one company that has much of an issue with the ones that protect the environment in today’s world and yes I can site lots of things in the past that contradict that, but those I don’t see as the norm and business today deplores that history as much as anyone does. What the government is lousy at is picking winners and losers and funding the way they think the markets should go rather than the consumers.

Human labor will always be of value. What really devalues human labor is when you can get a monetary reward equal to labor for doing nothing.

I suggested reading up or watching clips of Milton Friedman I would also recommend reading up on W. Edwards Deming and his message to the industrial world.

Here is an interesting exchange between Michael Moore and Milton Friedman. Michael was about 150 pounds lighter then.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xJJhZjKBjo[/ame]
 
slownsteady said:
That, my friend, is a two-way street.
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I can’t agree more. I constantly evaluate my perception of reality and I quite often modify it and sometimes change it. I rarely try and change others perception of a particular reality because it is one of the most difficult of tasks when their view and mine are diametrical opposite. I rather support free thinking and hope that people think about actual facts they know to be true and then formulate their own personal reality based around facts. Today too many of us really on someone to gather and digest facts and present facts to us as consumption with their realty mixed in. sometimes the presenters reality is really theirs and sometime it is slanted for a reason with an agenda. We know this from the history we were taught in school. Like how we sat down with the Indians on the first thanksgiving and all ate turkey and pumpkin pie together and had a grand old party together. The history of industrialization of this country is also sugar coated and feed to us that same way and some might dirty secrets are forgotten. That breaking into an industrial society and its dirty secrets is now going on in other places in the world right now. There is a bad side to almost everything that happens that changes mankind. And we have to view the good along with the bad and hopefully more good comes from it than bad. Take China emerging at a rate far faster than we did as they have the benefits of copying rather than inventing technologies. You had billions of people living in squalor with all the nasty health related issues of such. Now come industrialization and many are lifted to a better quality of life but some suffer from new problems caused by the new lifestyle. Some peoples reality only see the problems industrialization causes and not the benefits it creates.

Take Neal’s job for instance. He is one of the last of real jobs left. He builds homes with his bare hands. If it wasn’t for guys like him and our economic systems we have in place our shelters would all have to be of our own doing. Could you imagine what people would be living in if it wasn’t for our system and guys working for guys that are in the business of constructing so much more from the ground up than we could ever do by ourselves.

That’s the top level story to a home now let’s look below the surface. A home starts with excavation done with a machine built in a factory on an assembly line with robots and many workers. We could dig all this by hand and have many more jobs and use shovels made by a shovel smith hammered out by hand. We then pour the concrete made in a factory highly automated with workers pushing buttons put in a truck made in a factory driven across roads maintained with automated equipment and poured in the forms and smoothed off by workers. If we use blocks those come from an automated factory also. Then we get to framing the sheet material is made in a highly automated plywood/ OSB plant with lots of workers the lumber is harvested with automation and is processed by automation into 2x4’s and every other size and shape you can think of all in a factory. Wire, plumbing, drywall, doors, windows, insulation, plaster, paint, toilets, sinks, baths, carpets, flooring, fixtures, hardware, nails, screws, even the trusses are assembled off site in a factory, roofing, driveway even the plantings come from automation, even the sod in the yard come from an automated sod farm. The owner of the home building company proudly says I built that house over there and he never touched a piece of material. The actual carpenter says he didn’t build that house I did he just made 10 times as much money for sitting on his *** because he owns the company I really built it. When in actuality it was some guy working for my company that built an automated system that made all that material in mass quantities and all the tech people that keep that machinery running played a big part in the big picture.

The family moving into that beautiful house is able to have such a beautiful big place as opposed to a tiny rough sawn primitive home because of automation and robots.

That’s just building but every aspect of our lives is made better because of free enterprise and automation and the guy at the top getting rich for doing it.

A rising tide lifts all ships. Yes times are changing and yes the people in government for the most part have no clue what they are doing and have no business pretending they do understand. Things in my perception work better when they get out of the way.

The best part of the world we live in is that we can disagree on some issues and still be friends. :)
 
I like your response, and not just because of the last line. If a discussion like this couldn't remain friendly, there would be no use in having it.

My original point was not to curse technology ( automation, robots, etc.) I understand that it has made life easier for all of us and has kept prices down for the most part. The side effect is a surplus of unskilled laborers, which most economists write off as a casual number on a spreadsheet, and dismiss. Unfortunately, those people have nowhere to go, and can't be erased. So what do they do?

A rising tide lifts all ships is a nice metaphor, but a ship with holes in the hull just stays at the bottom.
 
Times change and technology moves ahead I could actually make an analogy just the opposite from my firsthand experience in industry. Having been at this game for 42 years now there was a point about 30 years ago I felt I was at the top of my game. I totally understood the most complex of industrial controls and also the hardware to go along with that. My knowledge of machine tools and machining were also state of the art and people still designed things on a drawing board with paper and pencil and some of the old timers still used a slip stick for cyphering. (What could be better than that we put a man on the moon that way.) That last line will separate the men from the boys if you understood it. I was at the pinnacle of my chosen profession. The young kids were going to have to learn from me if they wanted to grow and advance. All of a sudden everything I knew was buggy whip manufacturing do to the advent of computers. Sure I could turn knobs and make anything but the rest of the world wasn’t turning knobs they were tapping keys. The young guys that didn’t know a thing about anything sure knew how to embrace computer technology though. I was quickly falling into the unskilled labor pool and into the deep end because I was expected to be in the lead not following. 50% of what I knew didn’t change and the other 50% was changing as fast as I was learning it new. You have to reinvent yourself or you will be left behind.

The unskilled laborers are not being left behind by the world moving ahead they are being left behind because they are not reinventing themselves. All advancements have ever done was increase opportunities and made more jobs not less. It’s up to the person to figure out where they fit in and do something about getting the skills to get in the game.

First hand I have friends that just got out of dairy farming. They are not rich people but they had a nice operation and worked 365 days a year. The main reason they went out of dairy was there are no kids or unemployed people or anyone that wants to do hard work for minimum wage. Occasionally they would hire someone who’s benefits had run out and was up against the wall. They would push back at first but over time they started actually liking the idea they had something to do and were feeling accomplishment. Then all of a sudden they would quit and most of the time it was because they figured out some new scam where there was money for nothing again. They didn’t fall thru the cracks because min wage should have been higher.

I saw a show on TV last year where a young guy set out to find 50 jobs in 50 weeks in 50 states with very little skills except being a nice guy and needing work. I think he was writing a book or something also. He went from state to state and some of them he felt the job was so good he wished he could keep it.

You are right a ship with holes in the hull is never going to leave the bottom. And every time we hand someone a lifejacket and tell them here is your sea ration get off the boat it’s sinking rather than get over there and plug up some of those holes in the hull we will feed you when everyone else eats, the ships will continue to sink.
 
I still use my slide rule.
Bud , I don't think anybody will argue the things change in time and the worker has to keep up. Even the miloker has to be able to read the hot tag and dump the milk from that cow.
But come on, radios and what have you were made in the US for years, people just stud in one place and soldered this peice to that lump, do you think the people in asia have to learn a whole lot more to make phones.
You will be hard pressed to find any improvements in how to stitch a shirt or a pair of jeans.
Give us your week and poor and we can use them.
No wait we can make more money if you keep your week and poor, we can use them where they are.
 
I used to have that very same circular slide rule, I wonder what ever happened to it. I bet it’s in the back of a desk drawer here some place.

As to the min wage milker never dumping hot milk into the bulk tank when the cow was tagged. We had one guy I nicknamed “Lumpy” that did it twice in one week. The first time he had a list of ear tag numbers of who was treated and the treated cows had bright red vet wrap on each hind leg about 6 inches wide and he was told 50 times when you milk a treated cow pull off the hose from the pipeline and attach it to the bucket. Milk the cow and then flush everything out with water and reattach the hose. So he milks one into the tank right at the end of milking and guess what open the valve and dump 10,000 lbs of milk in the manure pit. Few days later he has numbers, he has red tape and now he has cows that are spray painted red that you couldn’t miss from 100 yards away. Same thing another 10,000 lbs down the drain. Lumpy got fired after that and is now a certified KIA mechanic at the local dealership changing oil. I bought my filters and left.

Getting back on topic I never said there wasn’t a great out sourcing of work out of the country and there wasn’t a great deal of workers out of work in the country. What I said is automation and robots are not responsible for job loss (net) or work being taken to other countries.
Neutron Jack Welch mantra was “Automate, Immigrate or Evaporate”.

Companies are not automating to get rid of jobs they are doing it to increase productivity. When that happens sales go up and companies expand and hire more people. Automation is a way to keep work from being outsourced to countries that pay nothing.

The way I apply logic is to look at a problem in reverse. Take Neal for example where he lives I’m sure they could use more jobs. Let’s look at his well automated profession and view it in reverse. Let’s de-automate all the products he uses and employ more people. We could start simple and take away his job killing power saw and nail gun for starter. That would employ at least 4x Neal. Get rid of the excavation equipment and we will save on pollution and make more jobs. One Neal in an excavator or 30x Neal with shovels. Keep in mind my calculations are based around building a home in the same amount of time we do today. I could go on about the job site but the true automation happens up stream of Neal he doesn’t see. Instead of getting a load of plywood and 2x4s lets deliver some logs to the site and saw them with a pit saw like the 150 year old homes here are made with. To get enough lumber and decking I would say you would need another 50x Neal. In short order at min wage labor we would have his town fully employed but the cost of the home would be out of reach of anyone working so we wouldn’t have a buyer and no buyer no jobs.

Take that analogy times a million and you have an economy.
 
Not to change the subject to much but around here I see more people that I call the "unemployable". I myself and the construction company in the building next to me talk about it all the time. He will have an ad out to hire some guys. He has a huge sign on his building and a large logo on his door. These potential employees continuously come to my building and talk to my receptionist, I too have a large sign on my door. They are applying at a company called Apex and my company is CW Development. These people bring in his application to my office and ask for an interview. I will go out there and ask them where they are applying and most have no clue and many say they picked up the application from here even though the app has his company name on it. This has happened at least 20-30 times in the last year or two. For me if you don't even have any clue where you are applying you shouldn't be looking for a job.

Besides that we get guys the are stoned off their asses coming to an interview with their medical card for pot.
We get guys showing up in sandals and shorts to apply for work.
We get guys that can only work certain days and certain hours.
I get applicants that are in their mid 20's with no DL and want to be picked up from their homes everyday.
Most all have little to no experience asking for 20+ per hour because they need it or because it is hard work.

Sad thing is that this is the majority of applicants, I would say about 98% of what we get. Am I supposed to bend over backward to employ these people to be fair and let it hurt the company?

If I do end up hiring anyone, most will quit within a day or two because of the long hours and hard work. I have probably gone through 30 guys in the last year or two, it's getting expensive to keep training people to quit.

I am not sure if California is different than other places but it is almost impossible to find a hard working sober person that is willing to work for a fair wage.
 
We hire here all the time and I have told so many people looking for work to get on the list. They say no I could never work there etc. It never dawned on me till I was telling someone about no one wanting a job and they said oh he wouldn’t have passed a drug test and knows that. Then the light came on.

On a lighter note:

Talk about a mix up applying for work. My friend built a little 4 unit shopping plaza on the main drag and in one end he has his auto repair business and his office is at the end with his company name on the door. The other units are retail shops etc. Behind the plaza was an old bar that was sold and turned into a strip club and at least once a week some girl walks in to interview for a job dancing.

I will leave the rest of the story up to the imagination. But I will say he never complains about them coming to the wrong place.
 
bud16415 said:
I

Take Neal for example where he lives I’m sure they could use more jobs. Let’s look at his well automated profession and view it in reverse. Let’s de-automate all the products he uses and employ more people. We could start simple and take away his job killing power saw and nail gun for starter. That would employ at least 4x Neal. Get rid of the excavation equipment and we will save on pollution and make more jobs. One Neal in an excavator or 30x Neal with shovels. Keep in mind my calculations are based around building a home in the same amount of time we do today. I could go on about the job site but the true automation happens up stream of Neal he doesn’t see. Instead of getting a load of plywood and 2x4s lets deliver some logs to the site and saw them with a pit saw like the 150 year old homes here are made with. To get enough lumber and decking I would say you would need another 50x Neal. In short order at min wage labor we would have his town fully employed but the cost of the home would be out of reach of anyone working so we wouldn’t have a buyer and no buyer no jobs.

Take that analogy times a million and you have an economy.
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There is problem with using me as an example.

This is the way it works, I compete for my work.
I no longer have the two guys on site to move lumber from the street and help with heavy lifting, but the builders would still get the dump load when your not looking and guess who moves the lumber. If I don't have all the latest tools to make the job move along I just don't make any money. All that really happens is I make the same money for building 12 houses a year as I did building 4 houses a year with 2 less jobs. Houses didn't get cheaper. And now that most of the tools are being made offshore and poor quality.
There are winners but the winners aren't the workers or the small business owners.
As a small business owner I judge success both by my success and the success of my empoyees. It is important that they can feed their families and have a good life. Min wage is a last grasp for air for a diying business and when supper successfull businesses use it they should be ashamed of them selves.
 
I pay minimum wage for my front office girl and parts runner. If it cost me any more I would have to get rid of them and have the other guys do those jobs. There is not enough money in the company to keep them around if it cost more. They are not really needed positions and are really only there to keep a couple people employed. With minimum wage going up they will likely be laid off or costs will have to go up.
 
Chris said:
I pay minimum wage for my front office girl and parts runner. If it cost me any more I would have to get rid of them and have the other guys do those jobs. There is not enough money in the company to keep them around if it cost more. They are not really needed positions and are really only there to keep a couple people employed. With minimum wage going up they will likely be laid off or costs will have to go up.
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Oh boy, I understand the pain and even worse is the emplyee that you have valued and givin a little raise and then all of a sudden they are back to min. when the min. goes up.
Things do come up that puts pressure on small business people and the last thing we or most of us want to do manage the business, we just like it when things hum along as usuall but some time we have to make tough decissions.
Cutting people usually means a more expensive person is doing that cheaper work or we find ourselves doing longer ours.
It will take time for your prices will raise to bring things back to normal.

That dosn't mean there isn't a need for the change. Depending on your empoyees story they could be on food stamps, that is wefare and gov. subsidy for your business and allows you to keep the prices low enough to stay in business. Since your not getting rich I suggest that when you work for really big companies, they are the welfare queens the benifit from your low prices.
 
Luckily both my low paid employees are young and using this as a stepping stone while they attend school. They live with their parents or have roommates. They live just fine. My front office girl tells me all the time it's not a big deal if I need to cut her as she has saved her money and is in school full time.
 
There's always going to be entry level positions where you learn and then advance. My problem is paying McDonald's employees 15$ an hour because they "need " it. No , you need to get into a profession where you can advance through hard work.
 
buffalo said:
There's always going to be entry level positions where you learn and then advance. My problem is paying McDonald's employees 15$ an hour because they "need " it. No , you need to get into a profession where you can advance through hard work.
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That is the number one reason I am against it.
 
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