McDonalds "Minimum wage isn't that bad, you just can't have heating, or gas, or insurance"

[Kanriel]

McDonald's almost always starts at minimum wage, then moves up 25-50 cents every 90-120 days or so. I'm guessing if you got detail on how they're coming up with the numbers, they're claiming a pay rate closer to 10/hr.

Are you sure about those raises? At my fast food place regular employees (those at minimum wage) get $0.05 raise a year. Managers get $0.10 raises a year. My GM put in for me and my coworker to get the "better" raise of $0.12 and those up the chain denied it.

[Ziero]

...it's like no one remembers the industrial revolution where the US was treating workers much the same way as China does now. Companies give you a pittance of compensation to it's workers and workers (very literally) would give their entire lives to the companies. It wasn't until Federal Regulations came into play and broke many of the horridly abusive systems companies had in place that things got better. Right now, we're pretty much seeing that exact system repeat itself. Companies get richer and richer, asking people to do more, give more and work more...while at the same time paying less and less. Minimum Wage shouldn't be "abolished" because that would only help the people who don't need any help at all, but just raising it doesn't really fix the long term problem either.

Long story short, this whole system is bjorked.

[hey]

Minimum Wage shouldn't be "abolished" because that would only help the people who don't need any help at all

You are dead wrong. It also helps the people who need more help than anyone else. If there was no minimum wage, businesses would suddenly find a million positions to fill that don't really make much sense right now, because they wouldn't earn/save them > $8/hr from the labor. Long term unemployment would be nonexistent.

[archibaldcrane]

Long term unemployment would be nonexistent.

You're retarded.

[Alarial]

You are dead wrong. It also helps the people who need more help than anyone else. If there was no minimum wage, businesses would suddenly find a million positions to fill that don't really make much sense right now, because they wouldn't earn/save them > $8/hr from the labor. Long term unemployment would be nonexistent.

This may be the single dumbest thing I've ever read on the internet. Or at least in the last hour.

[Correction]

If we had a national social safety net that put Scandanavia's to shame I might see the case for abolishing the minimum wage.
But since we don't, abolishing it and doing nothing else seems stupendously bad.

[Headspace]

You're retarded.

hey

[GoggleHead]

...it's like no one remembers the industrial revolution where the US was treating workers much the same way as China does now. Companies give you a pittance of compensation to it's workers and workers (very literally) would give their entire lives to the companies. It wasn't until Federal Regulations came into play and broke many of the horridly abusive systems companies had in place that things got better. Right now, we're pretty much seeing that exact system repeat itself. Companies get richer and richer, asking people to do more, give more and work more...while at the same time paying less and less. Minimum Wage shouldn't be "abolished" because that would only help the people who don't need any help at all, but just raising it doesn't really fix the long term problem either.

Long story short, this whole system is bjorked.

For real. It's like everyone slept through history class or something.

[Uzor]

$100 MIGHT be doable but you're gonna need a lot of coupons among other things and if you're working 80hrs a week you dont exactly have all the time in the world to go shopping for deals, cut coupons, shop for bargains and shit. A lb of ground meat on sale around here is $4/lb, I would venture to say you'd probably end up spending $2-3 per meal on the very low end and if you eat 3 meals a day you're about double that $100 in 30 days.

You don't HAVE to eat meat every day. There's several things you can eat besides meat. No, the food will get boring after a while since you're essentially eating the same thing every day. Besides, the budget also included $27 a day for free spending which can very well go towards food. 30 dollars a day can get you very nice food.

If we had a national social safety net that put Scandanavia's to shame I might see the case for abolishing the minimum wage.
But since we don't, abolishing it and doing nothing else seems stupendously bad.

Sadly, this isn't possible in America. In a country where everyone is trying to find a way to abuse the system, there's no such thing as a good social safety net. The reason it works in Scandinavian countries is because were terrified of breaking rules. Of course we have people abusing the system, but they are in a great minority. If America adopted Sweden's welfare system for example, most everyone would abuse it. You wouldn't have enough people working to actually cover the cost of welfare. Your entire country's mentality is vastly different to the mentality of the Scandinavian countries. Whereas we don't mind paying high taxes to help people worse off than ourselves, you guys go by the mentality that you don't want to pay for other people to be lazy.

We see social safety as a safety net, knowing that if we ever get unlucky for whatever reason and can no longer support ourselves, the rest of society will have our backs and help us out until we get back on our feet. You see it as a way to cheat the system and get free stuff. And I don't blame you, the mentality of a lot of people in the US makes it very hard to have a proper functioning welfare system, where they attempt to claim any benefit they can just because they can. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. Bottom line is, with as many people as you have abusing the system, a good welfare system is just not possible.

The thing is, social welfare isn't something that's supposed to make life "fun". It's supposed to offer the bare minimum you need to survive. It's not supposed to give you good or decent food, it's supposed to give you enough food to survive. If you want to live a good life with good food and vacations, you need to have a job. With a job you'll pay taxes, which goes towards helping out those less fortunate. If you ever happened to be fired from your job and find yourself unable to find a new job, the government will pay to keep you alive in the meantime until you can get back on your feet. Simple as that. You're not supposed to claim welfare because you're lazy and don't feel like working because it's easier that way. If everyone thinks like that, the system breaks down and is no longer functional. And that's where your problem lies.

I see Americans make fun of the Scandinavian system all the time. But that's mainly because they don't share the same mentality as Scandinavians. It's a good system if you follow the rules, it's a horrible system if you don't.

[Alarial]

Is Uzor saying that social programs in America are bad because poor people in America are lazy succubuses compared to poor people elsewhere?

Do people sincerely believe that welfare abuse is that prevailant? Or have they just simply fallen for the "blame the poor" mentality of Fox News?

[Ashmada]

As far as raising a fam and shit goes; I don't think you should be able to support a family of 2-4 members flipping burgers, so yea. Step your shit up to step your life up.

It's really sad to see the impoverished embrace the very mentality that keeps them down.

If every single one of those McDonalds workers "stepped their shit up", what would happen? Are they subhumans? Beings not worthy of a decent life?
Hell, if this budget is to be believed, they're not even worthy of mere survival, let alone a decent life!


The problem lies in globalisation, of course.
Big corporations have all the power on a global scale.

Taxes rise? Laws require you to pay your workers an "outrageously high salary" (about 1/100th of the CEO's!) and charges? Threaten to delocalise.
Threaten the loss of enough jobs, you get pay no taxes whatsoever! And then you delocalise anyway, because fuck those loyal workers, that's why.
There's more profit to be made by exploiting a sweatshop in a developping country.

Those corporations foul human dignity, spit on the chart of human rights whenever possible and they're not even doing it in the name of some sort of ultra-capitalistic utopia*, as they suppress competition through any means legally availlable.
They force a fierce competition on the world's governments (lower the wages, lower the taxes! Always!), but will readily merge with/buy out any serious competitor.
They've got our collective nuts in a meat grinder, and judging by the taste of their burgers,...


*a dystopia by any other name.


Edit: Alarial: no, I believe he's saying the "meritocracy" mindset has been hammered in your collective brains for so long it permeates the air.
Even your leftists buy into it, that's how ubiquitous it is.
Re-edit: nope, nevermind. I hadn't read it all, he is saying what you thought. Kinda racist.

[Uzor]

No, I'm saying that the mentality in America is that people like to abuse the system. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter, if you believe people will abuse it ou won't want to pay the taxes required to support it. In turn, people are more prone to do it because it's already expected they will.

I can count several ways (both legal and illegal) to abuse every welfare system in Sweden, but I'm still fine with paying the taxes required to support it because I believe most people won't. And most Swedes share my mentality.

It's not only the poor that abuse it in America. A lot of them truly need it, but the rich and middle class people believe they're just lazy and don't want to work. Some do abuse it, yes, but not all. And some rich people abuse it too - not necessarily the welfare system, but you can't honestly say that you guys don't live to find loopholes in every system in place

[archibaldcrane]

The problem lies in globalisation, of course.

Um, not really. You can't serve Americans burgers from India. The nature of many minimum-wage jobs in America are things that can't be outsourced because they must be performed locally - retail/restaurant jobs.

[Ashmada]

Well, yes, that's something I meant to touch on but forgot:

In some areas, you can't delocalise, but once the idea of big multinationals not having to pay decent wages (or taxes) because they "create jobs" is anchored, it becomes hard to create exceptions, even in those areas.

Tbh, if I ever come to be involved in politics, one of the things I'd do is fight to drive off McDonald's from my country.
We don't need them. People will always need to eat and restaurants will always exist, so really, we'd be better off with independents and smaller chains. On every level.

Anyway, too tired to express myself very well, so I'll bow out for today.

[Alarial]

No, I'm saying that the mentality in America is that people like to abuse the system. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter, if you believe people will abuse it ou won't want to pay the taxes required to support it. In turn, people are more prone to do it because it's already expected they will.

I can count several ways (both legal and illegal) to abuse every welfare system in Sweden, but I'm still fine with paying the taxes required to support it because I believe most people won't. And most Swedes share my mentality.

It's not only the poor that abuse it in America. A lot of them truly need it, but the rich and middle class people believe they're just lazy and don't want to work. Some do abuse it, yes, but not all. And some rich people abuse it too - not necessarily the welfare system, but you can't honestly say that you guys don't live to find loopholes in every system in place

The Clinton Welfare reform act cleaned up a lot of the inefficiences, but yes there will always be some waste. I'm all for improving efficiency, but to call social welfare programs unsuccessful (when they've been proven to be massive economic stimuluses), simply because of inevitable waste (when shown to be minor), is illogical.

[Uzor]

That's not what I said at all. What I said is that I works for Scandinavian countries because we have the mentality that the good outweighs the bad - that is to say that while we find it annoying that some people abuse the system, the benefit of having it in place outweighs the chance of people abusing it. In America, you have the complete opposite mentality, where a lot of people - perhaps even a majority - don't see a point in having the system if people can abuse it, because they don't want to pay for anyone else to have the option of abusing it. As long as said mentality is in place, it is not possible to have a good welfare system.

Like I said, Sweden's welfare system is easy to abuse if you so choose to do it, bust the vast majority of us choose not to do it even though we could. Because it would be wrong, and Swedes don't like doing things that's morally wrong. And as such, we believe that most other Swedes think the same way, ergo, the system works, because in a way its a self-fulfilling prophecy. It works because we want it to work.

[Talint]

That's not what I said at all. What I said is that I works for Scandinavian countries because we have the mentality that the good outweighs the bad - that is to say that while we find it annoying that some people abuse the system, the benefit of having it in place outweighs the chance of people abusing it. In America, you have the complete opposite mentality, where a lot of people - perhaps even a majority - don't see a point in having the system if people can abuse it, because they don't want to pay for anyone else to have the option of abusing it. As long as said mentality is in place, it is not possible to have a good welfare system.

Like I said, Sweden's welfare system is easy to abuse if you so choose to do it, bust the vast majority of us choose not to do it even though we could. Because it would be wrong, and Swedes don't like doing things that's morally wrong. And as such, we believe that most other Swedes think the same way, ergo, the system works, because in a way its a self-fulfilling prophecy. It works because we want it to work.

This is some pretty lulzy reasoning. "We're just better countrymen."

[archibaldcrane]

Americans hate taxes and see them as a constraint on their freedom, and we all know how much Americans love freedom.

Scandinavians don't have nearly the anti-tax sentiment, and don't see restrictions on "economic freedom" (taxes) as the same as other freedoms.

From there, everything else follows suit.

[GoggleHead]

Americans hate taxes and see them as a constraint on their freedom, and we all know how much Americans love freedom.

Speak for yourself. The only reason I hate taxes is because they're way more complicated than they need to be.

1. How much money did you make this year?
2. Pay X% of that.
3. Done.

That is how taxes should work, but instead the system is convoluted to the point where you have entire firms and software suites devoted to helping people figure out how much money they owe the government every year.

I'd love to pay more taxes if it meant our society could have all the sensible social safety nets many European countries implement.

[archibaldcrane]

Speak for yourself.

/sigh