OT: Lumber prices double, triple, cost of new house +25K

Correct, we need the unskilled. At least pay them enough to be able to eat and have some sort of housing.

Jury pay can be a money maker. When I served I was told just keep the money because the paperwork to adjust was a PITA as I got my regular pay for the week too.

As an employer, you are obliged to release any employee summoned for jury service. ... Employers are required to pay employees for the first ten days of jury service under the Fair Work Act 2009. However, this does not apply to casual employees.

There are some really slow minded people out there. Let 'em starve?

Not very often, only 5 days a week for 45 years. In the right position they could do a good job, usually a repetitive one that would drive you and me crazy after a half hour.

I don't know if

That is part of it. OTOH, it you are out of work due to the pandemic from a 60k+ a year job you are not looking for the $10 variety.

Depends on your living arrangements.

Much more likely that you are competing with much lower cost foreign labor.

Sure, would you like to do it?

That is a BS excuse. It is how we are able to import things cheap but we still have to pay people to move those good, sell them, transport them, etc. Should we pay truck drivers, plumbers, electricians the same wage as their China counterparts?

They already get that.

Irrelevant to what makes sense for society to do.

Nope, its always been reality.

Irrelevant to your silly line about an incompetent business person.

You have to ask how incompetent does someone have to be to make minimum wage? McD pays $10 to start in coolie wage Florida and the grocery store starts at $11 for baggers.

On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:21:13 -0700, Bob F posted for all of us to digest...

Another funny one!

Yes, a nice refrigerator carton under the bridge.

So you are just a cheap prick that does not care about the welfare of your workers. If you can't pay $10 or more you don't deserve to be in business unless you to are making the lower wage.

Sorry to hear about your ethics toward working people.

Actually one with enough of a clue to realise that a job paying the minimum wage is getter than no job at all when it is an industry that can't compete with foreign labor otherwise.

Mindlessly silly.

Not sorry to hear you are actually that stupid, that has always been obvious.

None of those on the minimum wage live like that.

He is scared of Blacks and Latinos.

That is really the right answer.You have people like Nancy and our guy Scott living in California trying to tell us what the minimum wage should be in Arkansas. Even the federal government understands that and the GS pay scale is different in different states. A person in San Francisco makes 41% more than someone in Little Rock at the same pay grade. (Locality adjustment)

We act like there are not a half dozen other public assistance programs for anyone even close to the poverty level. Starving is not what is going to be happening. They may be living with room mates and sharing expenses but I did that for years myself in some pretty s***ty apartments.

The area that is wide open down here is construction. When my wife was building houses, a decent labor pool guy who was just down on his luck usually got snapped up by a trade. She had one middle aged guy, laid off from an office job working at ManPower who was an electrician in about a year banging down as much as he did at the office. The contractor snatched him up within 2 weeks of his starting. Unfortunately that was fairly unusual from the labor pool but some of them were grossly overpaid at minimum wage.

If you are laid off from a $60k job, you may have to move. Usually that means that whole industry is gone from your area or going fast. The computer business was like that in Ft Myers when I left IBM.

They probably get a nicer rent subsidized apartment than a $20 an hour guy can afford. There is a certain crossover point where sitting on the couch results in a better standard of living than working. Getting $600 a month unemployment exacerbated that.

Please stop putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about what minimum wage should be in any part of the country.

I've seen how some of those people live on low wages. They liked coming to work for us at $13 an hour so they could do better. You don't have a clue.

That shows exactly who you are. Classy guy.