Comments by "whyamimrpink78" (@whyamimrpink78) on "How Many Hours You Have To Work To Live Off Minimum Wage" video.

  1. +Geoff Ozzy Trickle down economics is not an economic term, it is a political term designed to smear an opponent without looking into and breaking down their policies. No different than calling someone a socialist. The idea that raising the min. wage means more money and thus more economic growth is displaying economic illiteracy (funny that you cited Bernie Sanders who is economically illiterate himself). The issue is that you can't consume what you don't produce. If a company is paying a worker a dollar more to produce the same goods/services, it becomes a poor investment that hinders growth. It is a reason why the income gap is growing, because we give money away to people who don't deserve it because they don't produce anything.
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  2. +Geoff Ozzy I don't think it, I know it. Give me any one of his economic policies and I can break it down in how he will just make the situation worse.
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  3. +Geoff Ozzy Define working. The US is near the top in productivity and GDP per capita. Those other countries also have small populations, as in smaller than a lot of our states.
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  4. +Edward Epperson If a town only has one place of employment then cost of living in that town will be low. But in today's age of technology the chances of that is low. Most min. wage workers are under the age of 25. Those that are older are either 1. Retired and simply doing busy work now 2. Working part time for supplemental income since a lot of low wage workers don't even work full time The term "living wage" is subjective and doesn't mean anything. One can work for $2/hr and live if they are living in a household that has a person that brings in more money. That is why almost 90% of those earning $9.50/hr or less are not poor. Also raising the min. wage means less hours or an increase in jobs thus now people are worse off.
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  5. +Mathew Carley Businesses don't pay more because they simply can't afford it, just like someone with low income can't buy a better product.
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  6. +Mathew Carley Let me turn your first statement around. If you are a worker and you can't produce enough wealth to justify a higher wage than you need be either be a better worker, or manage your money better, or you should just not have a job at all. And my statement is true. Most businesses work off of thin profit margins, and the ones that don't already pay their workers well. McDonalds are franchised, and if you are looking at the profits of corporate HQ than you need to realize that McDonalds are global as well, so that amount of money they make is not large when compared to the global economy. " and studies have shown the price increase necessary to cover wage increases for all employees would be insignificant - maybe 25c on the average combo - and even that would only be necessary if they wanted profits to remain flat rather than take it as a cost of doing business." One, that is not true. A business will cut hours first and then do a combination of raising prices and cutting portions. And two, if all it took was a 25 cent raise with no loss in customers then why don't businesses just raise price right now and make that much more in profits? Looking abroad they have higher cost of living in those areas.
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  7. +Mathew Carley 1. The productivity increase of min. wage worker has been basically stagnate for years. In some cases they have been replaced all together due to technology. We have seen an increase in productivity due to improvements in technology. Look up Skilled Biased Technological Change. 2. It is comparable. Businesses don't pay more for one simple reason.....they can't afford it. Same as in how some people down own homes or nicer cars. Businesses manage their money and if someone makes a low wage then they should manage their money as well. Businesses would love to pay more and offer more to both their workers and customers but simply can't. 3. What doesn't make sense? Over 80% of McDonalds are franchised, so no, McDonalds corporate headquarters simply can't raise wages because they have zero control over it. You seem to not understand how corporations work as well. Corporations have to keep shareholders happy. McDonalds has over 900 million shares oustanding. Shareholders want to see their investment grow for whatever reason (mostly retirement). If you cut profits you cut the value of shares thus you have now made investing in McDonalds a greater risk. Due to that people will pull out their money causing McDonalds to having to shrink in size and thus less jobs. It isn't as easy as they make X thus they can pay Y. As far as price increases are concerned, as I said, if all it took was that much of an increase with no lost in customers then businesses will raise prices already to collect more profits. But in the competitive market it isn't that easy. Herman Cain had a great discussion with Bill Clinton running through the numbers how forcing his business to pay for healthcare insurance will lead to employees being fired. Clinton said that they can just raise the price of pizza. Cain said that in reality you can't do that because larger companies can do with less resources (employees for example) until the market stabilizes. This is why Walmart supported a min. wage increase in the past, they knew it would hurt smaller competitors. So like with profits, simply saying it will raise the price of X a certain amount is over simplifying the situation. As far as other price increases are concerned? They are due to other factors involved in business related expenses which is another topic in itself. But usually can be pointed towards other government regulations (for example gas prices and the fact that regulations have not allowed for a refinery to be open in 40 years). If you look at PPP you will see that the US is high on the list of GDP per capita. The reason why is because of our low prices. What you also have to realize is that in all these min. wage studies the min. wage has be risen at small amounts, at around 30%. That is small compared to the US economy. Christina Romer said that if the min. wage were to go up to $9.50/hr, and assuming that all the money is transferred from the top (which isn't the case ever), the economy will grow 0.02%. That is it. So here you are jumping up and down about a min. wage increase and giving me numbers when you have to realize that overall we are currently talking about a small part of the economy. And comparing the overall economy to the min. wage and the price of the Big Mac is quite pathetic really. And I also love how you pick on a major corporation without realizing all the other companies that exist out there with much smaller numbers in profits and businesses. If you want me to provide data I easily can. Right now I feel the best route is to correct your misunderstanding of the current numbers you are looking at. You have to understand economics, business and marketing before we can go farther. Compare it to you have to understand general physics before we can go on to Quantum Mechanics, or Optics and so on.
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  8. +Mathew Carley What numbers do you want?
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