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    Who are the NERD fund donors Mr Snyder?

    Raise the curtain.

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    Anyone who knows how to run a business . . . (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by Kevin Rex Heine on Fri May 10, 2013 at 05:06:33 PM EST
    . . . knows that the single biggest expense associated with doing so is that of labor.  Artificially-inflated wages balloons the cost of labor, and that cost must be passed on to either the customer or the shareholder (or even to the employee, in the form of reduced hours).  In other words, jacking up the minimum wage just makes everything more expensive, which ultimately makes it tougher to keep the working class household budget intact.

    FDR signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law on June 25, 1938, which included a national minimum wage (originally set at 25¢ per hour), defined the standard work-week as five 8-hour days, and capped overtime at 4 hours per week.  The intention behind the minimum wage was that an employee who's either just getting into the job market or is learning a new trade should be protected against "employer exploitation" while they're learning the ropes and mastering the requisite skill set.  The concept makes sense, and if it'd stayed that way, I'd wager that the minimum wage wouldn't be half the political football that it is now.

    Unfortunately, the labor unions got hold of the post-war minimum wage by indexing their labor contract pay scales to a multiple of the minimum wage, giving the union lobby (and their Democrat Party proxies) the incentive to increase the minimum wage as often and as high as popular sentiment would allow.  If the original minimum wage were adjusted for inflation, then today the rate would be $4.13 hourly, ± 4¢ depending on who's doing the math, yet the current national minimum is $3.12 an hour higher than that.  Thinking as a businessman (or perhaps as a classical economist), how many more jobs would become available if the minimum wage were restored to its original purpose, and the rate were deflated to its inflation-adjusted original level?

    The current popular argument in favor of raising the minimum wage (to perhaps a "living wage") is based on the logic that one cannot support a family on $7.25 an hour (or $7.40 hourly in the case of Michigan).  Here's the flaw in that logic:  The minimum wage was never intended to be a long-term paycheck.  In fact, if you're still working at minimum wage a year after you've started the job, then the problem isn't your employer; the problem is you.  What you should be doing with your first 6-to-12 months on the job is establishing your professional credibility to the point that, at your first annual performance review, your employer is all too happy to give you a reasonable raise, lest he risk losing you to the industry competitor who's attempting to poach you off of his payroll.


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