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Bill: Mimimum Wage Abolishment
Details
Submitted by[?]: Freedom Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: January 2175
Description[?]:
| Here we go again # The vast majority of economists believe the minimum wage law costs the economy thousands of jobs. The most fundamental principle of economics is 'supply and demand'. In the case of labor, this means that the supply of workers goes up as wage goes up, and the demand for workers by employers goes down as the wage goes up. For example, imagine a janitorial job was advertised for hire. If the wage is $100 per hour, thousands of people would want the job. If the wage was $1 per hour, you probably wouldn't find anyone to do it. Conversely, if the government forced the employer to pay at least $7 per hour, the employer might decide not to hire a janitor at all, instead opting to have other staff pick up the duties. Thus, a job would be lost because of the minimum wage. Another example is restaurant employment. A manager might have $10,000 in her monthly budget to hire bus persons. If the wage is set at $7 per hour, the manager may only be able to hire 10 bus people instead of 15. Setting a mandated wage limit disrupts market forces of supply and demand. Just because there is no minimum wage doesn't mean companies can pay whatever they want. Would you work a dishwashing job that paid 25 cents per hour? Would anyone? If they raised the wage to $4 per hour, they might be able to hire a high school student. Consider some highly skilled jobs such as accountant, lawyer, and engineer. Do these people make $5.15 an hour? Obviously, the answer is no. Market factors of supply and demand determine how many jobs are available and what each job would pay. In summary, as the minimum wage goes up, the number of people employed goes down. When the minimum wage goes down, the number of people employed goes up. Keep in mind: the minimum wage only applies if someone is employed. # Teenagers, workers in training, college students, interns, and part-time workers all have their options and opportunities limited by the minimum wage. Over 95 percent of minimum wage jobs are taken by the groups named above. You cannot make a living and support a family on a minimum wage job. These jobs are typically positions requiring little or no training that can be filled by almost anyone. Many students, part-timers, and other young workers are willing to take much less than minimum wage, especially if it is a fun or educational job. We all know that having a paying job when you're young teaches values such as discipline, hard work, and responsibility. It teaches young workers how to handle money and deal with other people. Thus, as a society we want to maximize the number of young people that work, even if it's for small wages. In fact, earning low wages provides extra motivation to go to college or acquire advanced job skills by some other method. Raising the minimum wage to $7 or more will definitely help some people trying to support a family, but it will hurt the group that holds almost all minimum wage positions. It will simply mean fewer low-skill jobs for those that actually need them. # The minimum wage can drive some small companies out of business. Many people believe businesses have endless supplies of cash and can easily withstand minimum wage increases or other cost increases. Unfortunately, that's simply not the case. Over 90 percent of businesses fold within the first few years. Every time there is a recession, thousands of businesses go under. Restaurants, which pay wages at or near the minimum wage level, have the highest rate of failure of any business type. Anytime you increase the costs of businesses, you push them closer to the edge. Let's take an example. Imagine a small neighborhood hardware store. This hardware store isn't going to have the logistics and economy of scale advantages of say, Wal-Mart; thus, it must charge more. It probably makes up the price difference with better service. When you raise the minimum wage, it increases the operating costs for that hardware store even more. Thus, it must raise it's prices to cover costs. Eventually, prices get so high that customers conclude that shopping there isn't worth the additional cost. Slowly, the local hardware store is driven out of business. # A minimum wage gives businesses an additional incentive to mechanize duties previously held by humans. Most businesses, especially in the manufacturing and retailing area, have many mundane tasks that need to be done, such as running a cash register or tightening a bolt on an assembly line. One of the reasons the manufacturing sector has not been part of the job recovery is that businesses have found it's much cheaper to use machines to do tasks that were previously done by people. Whenever businesses automate any task, they usually must spend a lot of upfront money and time in order to save down the line. Because of the minimum wage, spending the upfront time & money seems more worthwhile. For example, Wal-Mart is in the process of adding automated check-outs to almost all of its stores. Thus, all those cashier jobs will disappear. Imagine what would happen if the minimum wage was raised to $6 or more, as some politicians want. Do you think Wal-Mart will be more willing or less willing to add more automated checkouts? I do not know how many times i am going to have to repeat this until the RSDP gets this but a company will never pay a wage that is lower than what a person can survive on, they will never pay a wage lower than what someone needs for food, clothes and accommodation. Why? Because a worker who is barely able to get by is not a productive worker, not an efficient worker and not a happy worker. Companies want their workers to be productive and efficient and happy as that means they produce more and make the company more money, that therefore is good for the company. Now if they can make the worker more productive and produce more and make them more profits even if they increase their wage, they will increase the worker's wages as it BENEFITS THE COMPANY TO DO SO! If you really want to look back at history, go back to Henry Ford, he wanted his workers to be more productive, he cut hours and increased pay and productivity increased so much that he drastically increased his profits. This goes on all the time in the free market and it is socialists and regulators like you that ruin it and keep people poor. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The nation's policy on minimum wage regulation.
Old value:: There shall be a minimum wage at a level that a single full time worker on it can adequately subsist.
Current: There shall be a minimum wage at a level considered a "living wage," well above the poverty line for a full time worker.
Proposed: There is no provision for a minimum wage.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 22:00:24, January 17, 2006 CET | From |  Freedom Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | New bill with response to the misstatements by the RSDP |
| Date | 13:55:35, January 18, 2006 CET | From | RSDP - Democratic Front | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | Misstatements? Won't you just cease this bill-spamming? |
| Date | 14:10:25, January 18, 2006 CET | From | Freedom Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | Disprove my reasoning then. Billspamming? Im not the one with a 20+ article bill, you are, im not the one with no arguments in favour of their articles, you are. OOC: At least i know why i believe in what i do, you just seem to be rigidly stuck believing what you do without any reasoning other than what some documents or the UN says |
| Date | 17:43:10, January 19, 2006 CET | From | RSDP - Democratic Front | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | 1. I only did so because the RFP advised me too. 2. What do you call proposing the same thing every single year? OOC: Yeah right! :rolleyes: |
| Date | 20:14:41, January 19, 2006 CET | From | Liberal Imperialist Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | Huzzah! RSDP you cant talk about billspamming. He is only proposing this again because he has come up with answers to all of your arguments, which you are yet to even dispute let alone disprove. If you want to be a proper party and not just one that dismisses stuff it cant argue with by crying "bill spamming" then you should debate. |
| Date | 21:22:17, January 19, 2006 CET | From | Freedom Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | Thing is the leaders of the RSDP dont know why they believe what they believe, they cannot come with any reasons apart from its in the UDHR (OOC: Or its what the EU/UN would do or is doing.) |
| Date | 21:24:33, January 19, 2006 CET | From | Freedom Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | I dare you to disprove my arguments, to come up with logical reasons why you are against. Oh and before you say it, a minimum wage is not a fundamental human right, that is the utmost bullshit i have ever heard, its not in your sacred Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it is not a human right, i would call it anti human rights as it forbids people from actually being able to offer their services to an employer at below the minimum wage level. |
| Date | 13:57:35, January 22, 2006 CET | From | Liberal Imperialist Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | The RSDP's ability to stop replying to a debate he had lost is truely astounding. |
| Date | 21:08:14, January 22, 2006 CET | From | Freedom Party | To | Debating the Mimimum Wage Abolishment |
| Message | Well then, i assume RSDP accepts the minimum wage is not needed. I move to vote |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 268 | ||||
| no |
Total Seats: 331 | ||||
| abstain |
Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: It is forbidden to impersonate a player or Moderator. |
| Random quote: "Because democracy is not a spectator sport." - 2004 Democratic campaign slogan |