Anyone watch "30 days" of FX?

[kurto]

I am a director in Business and Legal affairs who manages a team who do licensing and rights analysis for multiple television networks several television channels.

I have also taught improv workshops on the side for fun and extra cash.

I can't imagine what you think my job has to do with you gross generalizations about roughly 25% of our nation.

[MMMMMM]

Could be, kurto: I'll not say its impossible. But you must agree there is a limit or range. For instance if the minimum wage was $30 an hour I'll bet there'd be a helluva lot fewer minimum wage jobs. And the ceiling is probably a lot lower than that.

I know that I and my partner in the cleaning business (years later) decided to let go a very good worker just because we figured out we were paying him too much. So we did the extra work ourselves for a while after we fired him. So the small business scenario is not baseless--and apparently the other business owner in this thread concurs.

[MMMMMM]

Just a quick question, kurto, in case I missed it elsewhere: is that 25% figure: the heads of households (or singles) who are living below the federal poverty guidelines--or is it the figure for the people working for minimum wage. Because if it is just the percentage working at minimum wage, that must include an awful lot of high-school and college students, part-time moms, people living at home with their parents, etc. Big difference.

[kurto]

There are certainly limits. If suddenly minimum wage went to $30 an hour, it would be disastrous.

But all these arguments are moot since I've never seen any push for anything more then keeping the min wage tied to cost of living increases.

Some businesses no doubt might have trouble even with minor increases. But on a larger scale, the economy (and job market) has been positively effected.

[kurto]

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Just a quick question, kurto, in case I missed it elsewhere: is that 25% figure: the heads of households (or singles) who are living below the federal poverty guidelines--or is it the figure for the people working for minimum wage.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't have that detailed a breakdown. Here's the quote I got- (It was on one of the multiple sites I searched under minimum wage trying to find some data... unfortunately I didn't save the link..)

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The number of jobs where wages were below what a worker would need to support a family of four above the poverty line also grew between 1979 and 1999. In 1999, 26.8% of the workforce earned poverty-level wages, an increase from 23.7% in 1979.


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Because if it is just the percentage working at minimum wage, that must include an awful lot of high-school and college students, part-time moms, people living at home with their parents, etc. Big difference.

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Even if 50% of these people were students, part-time moms, etc... we'd still be talking about 10s of millions of people.

[Nicholasp27]

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If I ran an ice-cream stand or pizza parlor, I sure as hell wouldn't hire that extra employee I had been considering if it was a marginal decision in the first and THEN they raised the minimum wage substantially. Screw it, I'd just do the extra work myself.


[/ QUOTE ]

u obviously aren't an entrepreneur

u want the least skilled worker possible doing each job...

and re: economics

don't u think your opportunity cost is WAY higher than minimum wage? if not, then you're not a successful business person


NO entrepreneur would want to work overtime serving customers when he can pay employees to serve them...entrepreneurs work on the processes and leave the unskilled work to low wage employees

[Warchant88]

I'm enjoying this because MMMMMM and kurto are my two favorite posters on this site. It's like Hannity and Colmes, but not crappy.

[MMMMMM]

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If I ran an ice-cream stand or pizza parlor, I sure as hell wouldn't hire that extra employee I had been considering if it was a marginal decision in the first and THEN they raised the minimum wage substantially. Screw it, I'd just do the extra work myself.






[/ QUOTE ]u obviously aren't an entrepreneur

u want the least skilled worker possible doing each job...

and re: economics

don't u think your opportunity cost is WAY higher than minimum wage? if not, then you're not a successful business person

NO entrepreneur would want to work overtime serving customers when he can pay employees to serve them...entrepreneurs work on the processes and leave the unskilled work to low wage employees

[/ QUOTE ]

Well Nicholas have YOU ever run a SMALL business? When my partner and I did, we DID do some of the menial work ourselves to save money and cut corners--and because we were pretty damn efficient at it (compared to others who worked for us). We also sometimes HAD to do it, on occasions when our guy(s) didn't show up for work at all. So what you're saying does apply somewhat but only to a point.

If a SMALL business owner can't do nearly every person's job who works for him, better and faster than the employees can do it themselves, then that entrepreneur probably doesn't know enough about his own business and doesn't truly know it from the ground up (obviously this applies more to SMALL businesses than to large businesses).

As I posted above, we once fired a good worker because after some time we figured out that we were paying him too much. We took up the slack ourselves until we found someone who would do the work cheaper. By the way this was contract labor not an hourly wage but the same principle could apply given the right hourly wage and work conditions. Besides, it won't necessarily kill the owner(s) to put in some 70 hour weeks instead of 55 hour weeks for a while. That can at times actually be better than making a poor hiring decision.

[Nicholasp27]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If I ran an ice-cream stand or pizza parlor, I sure as hell wouldn't hire that extra employee I had been considering if it was a marginal decision in the first and THEN they raised the minimum wage substantially. Screw it, I'd just do the extra work myself.






[/ QUOTE ]u obviously aren't an entrepreneur

u want the least skilled worker possible doing each job...

and re: economics

don't u think your opportunity cost is WAY higher than minimum wage? if not, then you're not a successful business person

NO entrepreneur would want to work overtime serving customers when he can pay employees to serve them...entrepreneurs work on the processes and leave the unskilled work to low wage employees

[/ QUOTE ]

Well Nicholas have YOU ever run a SMALL business? When my partner and I did, we DID do some of the menial work ourselves to save money and cut corners--and because we were pretty damn efficient at it (compared to others who worked for us). We also sometimes HAD to do it, on occasions when our guy(s) didn't show up for work at all. So what you're saying does apply somewhat but only to a point.

If a SMALL business owner can't do nearly every person's job who works for him, better and faster than the employees can do it themselves, then that entrepreneur probably doesn't know enough about his own business and doesn't truly know it from the ground up (obviously this applies more to SMALL businesses than to large businesses).

As I posted above, we once fired a good worker because after some time we figured out that we were paying him too much. We took up the slack ourselves until we found someone who would do the work cheaper. By the way this was contract labor not an hourly wage but the same principle could apply given the right hourly wage and work conditions. Besides, it won't necessarily kill the owner(s) to put in some 70 hour weeks instead of 55 hour weeks for a while. That can at times actually be better than making a poor hiring decision.

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yes, and there is more to it than that

you do have to do the work yourself in the beginning, as you can't be the expert and improve it unless you know how to do those jobs...

HOWEVER

that is SEPARATE from minimum wage increases...

you may hire less at first to get it off the ground and running, while also learning yourself so you can make more improvements...

but if you are a true entrepreneur (and entrepreneur is NOT defined as someone who starts and runs a small business...it's a methodology and philosophy)

taking up some slack because someone doesn't show up or as a bandaid during a gap while finding a replacement is also SEPARATE from minimum wage increases


the fact of the matter is: even if minimum wage increases, minimum wage is still the LEAST you can pay someone...therefore you can't just replace those employees with cheaper labor...and substituting urself in is not a good economic replacement...again, opportunity cost

[MMMMMM]

Hi Nicholas,

I agree with you if the increase in minimum wage is slight or merely indexed to inflation perhaps. But if we're talking about a major leap--like to a true living wage--then some small business owners would take up some of the slack themselves--at least for a while.

Also, to get back to your argument: one thing to consider is that it can be a pain and a lot of work to grow a business. For various reasons opportunity cost isn't always a clear-cut issue.

For instance, what if you have a crew of workers in a service industry like lawn care or window-cleaning. Is your time always best spent going out to get new customers or doing expansionary activities? Not necessarily when you consider the overhead you may incur and capital outlay that may be required, and the fact that with more employees come more headaches too. Maybe for a while you would be better off trying to find ways to streamline your current operation, and increase its profitability.

Also, some businesses you can only grow so large before it requires that you undertake a major overhaul in your approach and structure if you wish to expand much further.

If you don't want to go deeply in debt and prefer instead a pay-as-you-go approach, there are additional limits to the speed at which you can expand. When I had a service busines that was how I operated.

All in all you make some good points and I'm just trying to show that it isn't completely cut-and-dried. Also I hope we haven't been talking past each other because of the difference in effect of merely raising the minimum wage to an index, or raising it to a "true" living wage.

An entrepreneur who does nothing but seek better opportunities (and perhaps clients as well;-)) had better have quite the cash cow business or a lot of financing/backing as a general rule. If you are in a lower profit margin type of business or a very labor-intensive business, I don't think the owner can always do things that way--at least not until he passes the invisible boundary from start-up/small to very well-established and some serious size. And every time you expand you have to keep hiring and eventually that means hiring managers and people to manage your managers or foremen, etc. Again there are often limits to the speed at which you can expand soundly unless you made a high initial investment in the business or are willing to go heavily in debt.

Thanks for your thoughts; I don't think I disagree with you as much as it might sound.