I don’t think my idea’s should be looked at as trying to take advantage of people (ala robber baron). Workers require and deserve protections to ensure they are not abused, I just think the government is not good at this. Labour unions, workers associations, and guilds are a more effective and efficient at protecting the interests of workers. They also do it without a tax to the system by making things mandatory by law etc.

I think we can all agree to disagree, I know my ideas are not part of the general populations political mind trust. That doesn’t keep me from believing in them, or hoping others start to believe them. There is no intended harm in this, just thinking that the government’s role in our life should be greatly different then it is now.

if they did abolish minimum wage rules i’d still be paying the same wages i pay now. i have well trained, qualified, reliable employees and good ones are hard to come by. without them it would be much more difficult to make my deliveries. without my deliveries i have no business. i’m not for abolishing minimum wage laws but there is some logic to it.

cindy, whether you agree with sean or think he is a robber baron you have to admit he has a better understanding of the entire economic picture relating to these issues than both of us combined.

Bad people and bad companies are going to pay people less then minimum wage with or without the law. For the big companies they simply out source it other cheap labor countries (Nike/Gap/etc.). The bad small companies will just ignore the law and pay people under the table to ignore the minimum wage, and ingore taxes.

A minimum wage does little to guarentee safe or good work conditions, or work schedule. It just inflates the value of a salary.

Laws and government’s role should be to protect people, and their freedom. Like Michael said earlier, you should be preventing abuse by punishing the abusers. How much money you get paid has little to do with your rights as a worker or your working conditions.

To assume that the bottom up approach will help prevent big corporations from doing bad things is not practical. Large corporations have the money to react to these changes by moving out of state, or out of country. If you really want to change big corporations the politicians need to start revoking corporate charters so that corporations understand their is backlash to their social abuses. Until you add the threat of death to corporation they can continue to operate in the most efficient manner to aid the bottom line, even if it results in them breaking laws.

Though, like you said this is what people want, then again look who “the people” wanted for president.

to answer your question. “why is this more outrageous than current minimum wage laws”. it’s not! and, it seems silly that i would argue against one but not the other. think of it this way, “we lost the war but are still fighting the battle”

I don’t see why this is anymore outrageous then the current minimum wage issues we have now. Everyone seemed to think Ole was insane for thinking there should not be a minium wage but I agree with him. Minimum wages impose a false inflation on the value of the work or services provided by a person. This inflation leads to additional inflations through out the market for any buisness that must pay the false inflation. This causes products and services to be more expensive where the end consumer pays tax of this inflation. Since everyone is a consumer, that person who gets paid the inflated minimum wage pays for it in the end when they purchase anything produced using that minimum wage.
The once nice thing about these inflated minimum wages is that the government gets to tax people more on their increased minimum, and tax more on their inflated purchases.
This doesn’t apply to michael since he has already integrated higher salary’s into his buisness model, he has determined his employee’s “value”, and pays them according to that.
Then again, I don’t see the minimum wage laws going away anytime soon. So I guess it really doesn’t matter now does it? :)

my response? unless i am way off base……
this ordinance require that you and your sub contractors pay at least $9.04 an hour to receive a city uniform contract. if you don’t you are fined $1000.00 or 20% of the contract.

what’s it gonna cost us the taxpayers?

$100,000.00 to $120,000.00 minimum

there is an estimated $50,000.00 to $70,000.00 in additional costs that will have to be added to new contracts so that the contractors can afford to pay their employees the living wage for the same work they may have done last year. in addition, the city is paying a company $50,000.00 to monitor companies that submit bids to insure they are compliant with the wage minimums. if it’s coming out of our stretched budgets who is it going to be taken from? it it’s not coming from existing program cuts…….. cindy, you do the math.

this ordinance has nothing to do with enforcing “decent” working conditions or enforcing minimum wage laws. it’s the first step towards the living wage law.

why do i car about this? it does not affect me or my company. i don’t make uniforms and i already pay more for entry level postions than $9.04. i worry about where ordinances like this will lead us. and, i know a precedent when i see one. this is just the first step to new, broader reaching legislation. give it a few years and we’ll talk!

but, our elected officials passed this and it must be what the people want. who am i to whine?

eric, josh. if i am in error reporting any of the facts i would appreciate your wisdom. i am quoting from a newspaper article not the complete text.