Many businesses support increasing the minimum wage

[eridani]

http://www.fair.org/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin151113Sklar.mp3

JJ: Support for raising the minimum wage is seen by some as a call for social policy to trump purely economic reasoning, as if economic policy were ever neutral vis-à-vis social goods; but put crudely, it’s seen as workers’ interest versus owners’ interest. So the very existence of your group would seem to complicate that presentation of things.

HS: Well, certainly, and that’s what we intend. There’s a big misunderstanding that there needs to be some kind of a split between business and workers on raising the minimum wage, or on the economics of it, but in fact we are a national network of business owners, executives and business alliances who do believe a fair minimum wage makes good business sense.

JJ: I don’t think that anyone truly believes that Walmart would have to go out of business if they paid workers more; it seems more like an ideological argument that if they can make a squillion dollars, then they are entitled to every penny. But the rhetoric often tells us that it’s the smaller businesses that would suffer, that wouldn’t be able to hire or wouldn’t be able to grow—and that seems to be what you are countering fairly directly.

HS: Yes, in general we know that it is absolutely the case that you cannot build a strong economy on a falling wage floor; and the minimum wage, adjusted for the cost of living, has fallen dramatically—at the federal level, $7.25, is actually lower, adjusted for inflation, than the minimum wage of 1950, and it’s a third lower than 1968. And so you cannot build a strong economy, and you cannot really build a strong business for the long haul, on falling real wages. Most businesses in the country are small businesses, and so by definition most of our members are small businesses, although we have some very large businesses as well, and we have business alliances—for example, the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, which represents about 30,000 businesses—that support raising the minimum wage.

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...nt

[pipoman]

2. And again

The greater New York chamber of commerce should raise the New York minimum wage. With the greater New York cost of living being at least three times (equal housing is 5 times higher in NY than MS) the cost of living in say Jackson Mississippi, there is no way to have one single minimum wage for the whole country that makes any sense at all....national minimum wage is a waste of time.

[alc]

3. big businesses love mandates and regulations

Little businesses can't compete. If I own a single franchise (or non-franchise) restaurant, I need to make a certain amount of money per employee per year to personally come away with $80k for myself. If I own 10 franchises I only need to make 1/2 that much per employee to come away with $160k for myself.

Neither the guy who owns 1 restaurant or 10 locations wants their personal profit decreased. But the one with 10 locations realizes he'll be able to buy another one real cheap or get more business when the other guy decides that $50k/year isn't worth it. Increasing costs of the little guy can result in a net increase of personal-profit for the big guy.

In the long run an increase will help both but it needs to be done slow enough that the small guy can deal with it and not have a sudden big personal income loss or be unable to give raises to the good existing employees (and lose them) because of the increase for new employees.

I'm not saying an increase is bad. Just that there are LOTs of types of businesses and mandates/regulations affect them all differently. For example, we need to be careful when Wal-mart is for something. It doesn't take much to put a lot of small shops out of business (make the owner decide it isn't worth it) and that just makes Wal-mart more powerful.

[eridani]

5. Most of these proposed laws have exemptions for smaller businesses n/t

[bigwillq]

4. I support raising it (nt)!

[WillowTree]

6. So what's stopping those businesses from raising wages to what they think they should be?

Why do they have to wait for the government to mandate an increase. Go ahead and do it on your own if that's what you think is best for all concerned.

[eridani]

7. So that they don't get undercut by their cheaper competition n/t