While I’ve already done some prelimary work trashing Cherniak’s objections to a $10 minimum wage, it deserves a more thorough working over.
The worn out arguments of lost jobs and unaffordability have already been slain. There is simply no evidence to support the foolish notion that jobs will be lost and the economic impact is negligible; it would for instance, cost Ontario businesses approximately $2.5 billion or a mere 0.5% of the provinces GDP. And these arguments have been slain around the rest of the industrialized world as well.
So I’m not going to concentrate on another round of debunking on this front but will instead address the new flakey argument Cherniak throws up for the slaughter.
Finally, we have to recognize that not all minimum wage workers are living on it. Many of them are students who live at home. They are just making some extra money to buy luxuries.
As the previous post points out, it’s not only students who try to eke out a living on minimum wage. The Wu familys of Canada have tried unsuccessfully and are now forced to send their children thousands of miles away in order to make ends meet.
At $8/hr. a 40 hour per week worker makes $16,500 per year. At $10/hr. that same 40 hour per week worker would make $20,500; a difference of $4,000 which is one-third of the way toward providing daycare for their family. Combined with a second minimum wage earner and they’ve climbed two-thirds of the way toward keeping their children with them in this country.
But even if we follow Cherniak’s line of argument that many of Canada’s minimum wage earners are students, it still falls apart for one simple reason. A problem many young Canadians are facing today is finding the money to pay for post secondary education.
Cherniak casually dismisses the need for students to earn a respectable wage on the basis that they’re just going to fritter it away on pop rocks candy or Britney Spears CDs. But in reality most of them need the extra money to get an education in order to avoid becoming trapped in a life working for minimum wage.
There are many reasons for supporting a $10 minimum wage, but as shown above the single most important one is that it allows Canadians to make their way in this nation on their own without needing to rely on government handouts or sacrificing their family’s unity. This in turn generates pride of accomplishment which is far too often lacking among those Canadians who have fallen through the cracks of the system and struggle against all odds to eke out a meagre living.
yabbut, how will we compete with chinese slave labour, robert?
A $10. per hour minimum wage is rediculuous
Those who don’t earn enough should develop their skills further in order to obtain a better paying job.
Let market forces work. If there is a paucity of people willing to work at the current minimum wage rate, employers will have to offer more in order to keep their staffing levels.
Pay people what their labour is worth.
Robert,
When I was twenty we could live on $5 per hour and still afford things. The government must be made to realize that they cannot have runaway inflation and out of date Minimum Wage at the same time, unless they want a lot more homeless people.
Now, as to sooey’s comment…here is a recent warning received by our CF in Afghanistan:
It’s getting ugly out there…
Ralph,
I totally agree. Let’’s start with CEO and pro-athlete salaries and Golden Parachutes, eh? That okay by you?
Absolutely Bill, let’s see, how could we do this. Oh here’s a thought, lets create a system where people own shares and for each share they have one vote for a board of directors. Let’s then make these directors responsible for setting management salaries. You don’t like the board, you vote them out. Brilliant!
Bill, what should a pro-hockey player earning 70 points a year be paid?
Robert, why stop at 10$, why not 20$ or 30$?
enh. people make $10/hour, they put a little more into the economy. gawd, conservatives are stupid.
john_mckay,
Yes, John , BRILLIANT! You won’t mind if we add one little thing to that, eh? How about the employees own the stock, control the company, and their respective futures, and board members must be employees of the company, not foreign absentee owners? The CEO is chosen by vote of the employees as well. The Board can make recommendations, but the employees get the final choice. That okay?
I think that is called a democracy, or were you thinking oligarchy, or perhaps plutocracy?
Hockey players? Gee john, please tell me what vital product they supply to our society and economy? Enlighten us all! We are waiting to hear how these highly intellectual entertainers make life better for us.
Cherniak’s a sexist pig who has obviously had a silver spoon in his mouth since birth (and perhaps he should put it back there). Oh, I get so damned ticked when I read crap like that. A $10 minimum wage will help overcome a lot of problems for single parent moms who work their butts off to raise their kids.
Yeah, Bill. Pay what their labour is worth.
If you don’t like what athletes and CEO’s are paid, don’t support their particular product.
Let the law of supply and demand dictate what someone is worth.
Jeez, you guys are blaming all the wrong people. Look at yourselves first and make a conscious decision as to what you think is fair and equitable.
IMHO
“Yes, John , BRILLIANT! You won’t mind if we add one little thing to that, eh? How about the employees own the stock, control the company, and their respective futures, and board members must be employees of the company, not foreign absentee owners? The CEO is chosen by vote of the employees as well. The Board can make recommendations, but the employees get the final choice. That okay?”
No it’s not okay and I will explain why. The owners of the company (those are the people that put their own money into the investment) should have control. That is their legal entitlement and claim by purchasing the stock. You’re suggestion is akin to you buying a car but not being allowed to drive it when and where you want. There is nothing to prevent the employees from purchasing stock in their own company, in fact many companies help their employees do this with matching contributions!!!!!! You are ignoring all the other stakeholders when you think that the employees are the only ones who should have a spot at the table. Keep this in mind, without investors, there is no capital to hire employees.
As far as the employees “controlling their respective futures”, first of all, A+ for over acting, C- for intelligence. Employees in this country are not forced to work for anyone or anything and these said employees are free to quit their job at any time. They do control their futures, maybe not the company’s future, but there own for sure. If they want to control the company’s future, they should buy shares. That is a democracy. One share, one vote. Real simple.
“Hockey players? Gee john, please tell me what vital product they supply to our society and economy? Enlighten us all! We are waiting to hear how these highly intellectual entertainers make life better for us. ” You answered your own question. They entertain. But I see only “smart” entertainers deserve to be paid in your eyes. How do we determine “intellectual”? More importantly, why is that at all relevant? To dumb it down for you, hockey players bodies are more intellectual than yours or mine as they can do things ours can not. You may not see value in that but the 17k thousand fans at the ACC the other night sure did.
And why does the product have to be “vital”? Are movies vital? What about poetry? Journalism… You get my point (hopefully).
Robert, if Jason is wrong and you are right, then why not $11.50 or $12.39 instead of $10 or $8?
then why not $11.50 or $12.39 instead of $10 or $8?
$10 is based on StatCan’s low-income cutoff (LICO) level and is at the lower range of what constitutes the poverty level.
So what?
If the affordability of the increase to the business doesn’t matter, and the affect on overall employment levels has been dismissed, and the primary importance is looking at wages from the employee’s perspective on what he/she needs/wants, what does it matter what some government report says?
By your logic, shouldn’t the government step in and tell businesses to pay employees a minimum of what is a true living wage? No matter what?
If the affordability of the increase to the business doesn’t matter, and the affect on overall employment levels has been dismissed
The affordability and affect on overal employment levels can only be dismissed when the increase doesn’t exceed what can be absorbed. That’s the case when it comes to raising the min. wage to $10, but it may not be the case at $12. That additional $2 could very well–and most likely would–translate into a cost to the business community of 4 times the cost of raising the wage to $10. In which case, using the Ontario example above, you’d now be talking about $10 billion or 2% of Ontario’s GDP. Those economic numbers are much more difficult to absorb and could begin to damage the economy.
Everyone should make what I make.
After all, it’s just not fair that someone with an easy and chushy service job should make less than that of a person who works a dangerous, labor and skill intensive job…
In fact, I just can’t see how forcing everyone to have the exact same wage will fail. Just look no further than the colossal successes of Cuba, North Korea, and the U.S.S.R as an example.
?
In response to sooey’s comment “enh. people make $10/hour, they put a little more into the economy. gawd, conservatives are stupid”…
I’m not Canadian, so I can’t comment on what the government needs to take in to fund it’s socialist agenda, so I don’t know the full driving force behind it… but let me interject this…
That worker who is making your sandwich makes $7.00 an hour now… the minimum wage goes to $10.00 per hour, he is happy, but the price of that sandwich just went up from $2.89 to $3.89 so the employer can pay him to make it… which makes the cost of the sandwich go up for the person making $20.00 per hour, along with everything else that person buys, making their $20.00 per hour worth a lot less than it was, which makes them want a raise, forcing them to look for a better job, causing their employer to have to raise their salary to keep them, raising the cost of their goods and services… suddenly the worker making the sandwich is right back where he was, still unable to afford to live and still working a crap job, just now it is for $10.00 per hour, instead of $7.00 per hour.
It’s all a big circle… raise one raise the other… isn’t there a better way?
The price of the sandwich wouldn’t have to go up by a buck if the CEO’s and the rest of upper management gave back the billions they’re stealing out of companies’ coffers, Fistandantalus.
No one deserves to be paid the ridiculous amounts that these vermin are extorting from the firms they self-servingly (mis) manage.
Yesterday, the failed head of Home Depot walked away with $250,000,000 in severance!
$250,000,000!!!!!
That could buy al lot sandwiches…and what did he do for it, you may ask? Well, he drove down the stock price, reducing the company’s value.
Incredible.
arhturdecco,
Careful, you will cause some to have apolplexy presenting such facts! Kind of like telling Funnymentalists that their religious history is a pack of bogus BS!