OT Why $7.50 is enough

If you adjusted the minimum wage to inflation $9-10 would be reasonable. Nobody ever said minimum wage was supposed to support a family. It is an entry level wage for the most menial work and if you are still only able to make that much money as a working adult, simply throwing more money at you is not the answer. You need to learn a skill.

When I started working, in 1963, the minimum wage was $1. Adjusted for inflation that is $8.55 now.

I suppose they should understand once they are making $15 some of those programs may be unavailable to them

Bad example They could be making $40,000-$70,000 a year depending on where they are, plus bennies.

Labor is a big part of the cost of most businesses ... until labor costs cause them to automate more. Walmart is already raising wages but I suspect the fast food joints will look more to automation. Your Burger King could go from a staff of 15 to 20 at lunch to 5 or 6. They already do not have burger flippers. They use an automated flame broiler. All they need is a robot to bun them up, add the condiments and wrap them. An automated fryer is not that complicated. The drink dispenser already measures the drink. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see a model where you order and pay on your phone, (you can already do that) the machines assemble your order and you just have a person shoving them out the window or over the counter. You have someone else dumping raw food and packaging into the hoppers. You could pay them $15 an hour and still pay to maintain the robots because you have a quarter of your former staff.

This is not really a new idea. I heard people at BK headquarters in Miami talking about it 30 years ago. It just didn't make economic sense then. The hardware and software we were developing for them was just designed to make the workers robots.

In a lot of places that just reflects the job market. If there are no jobs requiring the skills to earn more money, you are not going to make more money. Telling an employer he needs to lose money to hire someone makes him question how many he will hire.

It does all depend on where one lives. I would guess that in some cities of California or New York the 40 to 70 thousand may put one on the lower pay scale. Where I live that would be a very good paying job. The average wage is mostly under $ 18 per hour.

What is difficult is that I guess many things cost the same in all parts of the country not counting the homes and taxes.

It used to be that grocery stores around here hired people from 16 to 20 years old to stock the shelves and bag groceries. We even carried them to the cars and put them in the cars. Now there are some that just operate the cash registers and put the groceries in the bags. The fast food places hired the same age group for most of the jobs. Now those jobs are taken over by grown ups that are trying to make a living at it.

From what they are saying if the wages go up very much the fast food places will soon go to a vending machine type operation. More jobs lost to automation.

Yeah. I can't remember which downturn it was (1992?) that I first saw some gray-haired old man working at McDonald's. It was kind of sad. He definitely looked like he'd been downsized from a real job and was at the end of his rope.

Cindy Hamilton

Now I am reminded of my niece, a high school graduate, who went to work at a super market stocking shelves. Now she manages a super market in the chain.

Which is USD 15.31...

I think there is one real service station in town. For most the gas pumps are an addition to the casino or mini-mart that barely break even/

Correct, that is one reason to pay a decent wage, they don't suck off the government teat.

In 1963 it was $1.25

I know people like that too. Some could not change the radio on a new car though, an a lot of the other electronics.

You don't need 4 years but you need more than the old days.

That stuff is normally left to car radio specialists.

That?s very arguable indeed given that there is very little to do on modern cars now, just change the oil, redo the brake pads etc as required, change the plugs etc. Even with fault finding, its much easier to do now with the OBD2 telling you which sensor has failed quite a bit of the time and no timing etc to do anymore.

Makes no sense to require formal qualifications.

This is a cut'n'paste from twitter and I have not checked the numbers. $11 would put a single person over the SNAP limit I believe, for a full

I shop at Walmart about once a year after exhausting the other options in town so I have no feel for it. I have been shopping at CostCo for over 20 years and recognize quite a few people that have been working there that long so they must be satisfied.

Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

Min wage Costco: $16 Walmart: $11

Average pay Costco: $24 Walmart: $15

Employees on food stamps (subsidized by you) Costco: Virtually none Walmart: More than any other company

Founder net worth Costco: not a billionaire Walmart: over $220 billion; up $30 billion in pandemic

Some won't touch them. Evidently you have not seen the complexity of these units and everything they control. It isn't just a radio any more. Navigation, cameras, sat reception, connected services, modems, and more.

Without some training and qualifications you probably won't get a job at a dealership aside from changing tires. Have you looked at some of the battery connectors? They are not like on your '72 Chevy any more.

Where would you start looking for an error on the Automatic emergency braking system? or the Lane Keep assist. How about lining up the cameras after a windshield change? Some of the windshield companies will send you to the dealer for calibration after they change the glass. Do you know how to do it?

Sometimes I don't know about that. It took a dealer mechanic about 3 weeks just to find the mass air sensor (think that was the part) was causing my Toyota to run very rough. I had replaced the simple things like the plugs, wires, fuel filter. The Autozone or some other parts place had a chart that mentioned that, but as it was about a $ 500 part I wanted to make sure that was what it needed. This was on a 1991 so it probably did not have the OBD2 to tell what sensor was bad.

It took so long that I even emailed the Toyota headquarters about that.

I started working in fast food joints in 84 and we had some that were all kids with a 2.5 or 3 three a year turn over rate, a few were full of older people who had been there long enough to make decent money for Florida. That still wasn't the only bread winner in the house tho. It was empty nest housewives or ones with kids on school who wanted a daytime gig while their hubby was at work for some extra money. Those were the smoothest running shops because any one of them could have been the manager but they didn't want to move. I was one of the few guys who didn't mind fast food. I just made it easier with a change in the maintenance philosophy and we ended getting a pretty good reputation at Wendy's HQ. When they rolled out their new registers, they did it in our territory. I met Dave.