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Originally Posted by kstar
You obviously don't know many people or are an elitist that doesn't properly socialize. OK has one of the highest rates of people working for minimum wage. Almost all of those people fall below the poverty line.
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Why the personal attacks? Doesn't properly socialize? What do you mean? It's true that I don't really socialize with people who aren't of a similar background as myself. I think that's true of most people. Do you want me to go make some poor 'friends' so that I can claim that I properly socialize?
Your second sentence is as ridiculous as your first. I don't care how many people here receive minimum wage. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oklahoma has about 4% of its population working at or below minimum wage. This of course can be largely attributed to the fact that in Oklahoma, waiters and waitresses almost without exception work for $2.35/hr. The rest of their salary is tips. In other words, if these are the stats you're relying on, they're extremely misleading.
Maybe we have too many unskilled workers? How would raising the minimum wage help our economy and help those people? I get it -- we just throw money at the problem, pay our lowest-skilled workers another couple of bucks per hour, and the problem goes away, right?
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And if you think that people who work for minimum wage don't contribute to society, you are sorely mistaken. Every restaurant would close, since many of those people work for less than minimum wage. The orderlies at the hospital would be gone, and I don't think that doctors would be willing to sully their hands with taking out the trash... Most jobs that are neccessary for society to keep going are minimum wage jobs. Hell, half the teachers I know have to take a less than minimum wage job just to live over the poverty line.
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Your contentions are simply false insofar as I know. I don't know anyone at a hospital who receives minmum wage. I've already explained how your information regarding restaurant staffs was misleading. The businesses have the right to offer as much or as little as is needed to keep the positions filled and the quality of employees at a tolerable level. People who earn minimum wage have a world of options open to them. Framing houses, roof work, pouring concrete, janitorial services -- these jobs are all readily available, and they all pay well above minimum wage.
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Minimum wage should be raised. Most small and medium businesses I've worked at pay far over minimum wage, while it's the big business box stores that pay the bare minimum. Walmart is reporting record profits, while their employees are barely making over 5.25 and are losing benefits.
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Wal-Mart doesn't even pay minimum wage. Here in Oklahoma, in a place where the cost of living about the lowest you'll find, even Wal-Mart pays at least $6.50 if not $7.00/hr to its employees. Even so, the minimum wage earners in those kinds of jobs are easily interchangable, they have no real value to the company, so why should the company be forced to pay more for the employee than the employee is worth?
Shouldn't the burden be on the employee to improve their worth??