ANNAPOLIS – America’s wealthiest state, and one of its most expensive to live in, is primed for a battle between lawmakers who are pushing a statewide increase of the minimum wage and others who believe that one comprehensive hike doesn’t make sense in economically disparate Maryland.
Gov. Martin O’Malley earlier this week announced his support of a bill that would gradually increase Maryland’s minimum wage from the federal standard of $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour by 2016, indexing it to the cost of living starting in 2017 and raising the base rate for tipped workers from 50 to 70 percent of the minimum wage.
“The minimum wage in Maryland is no longer a wage that anyone can live on,” O’Malley said during his State of the State address Thursday.
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ReplyDeleteMinimum wage was never designed to be a career wage.
If you worked 40 hrs. per week for 52 weeks the current Federal minimum generates $15,080 annually. It is not a fortune but most earning that wage are kids or in family units with multiple wage earners. There are exceptions.
OweBamacare defines a full-time job as 30 hours per week or more and requires employers to offer health care benefits in addition to the hourly wage. There was no prior requirement to offer benefits.
No surprise many employers have cut hours back to that lower threshold. A min wage employee at 30 hours is now reduced to $11,310 for 52 weeks of work.
Mandating an increase to $10.10 would mean $21,008 for 40 hours and $15,756 for 30 hours.
For the employer, a 30 hour employee will cost more than a 40 hour employee used to, but they will be working 25% less.
All expenses of the worker with the increase will also increase, possibly even at a higher % rate.
The primary winners are OweMalley & crew because tax receipts based on wages will also go up on remaining workers, and they get to pose as caring humanitarians to the low info voters while giving other people's money away!
1:51
ReplyDelete"Minimum wage was never designed to be a career wage."
You have no clue, did you even do any research before you opened your mouth?
Yes back in 1938 it was.
As time evolved, as corporations do, they put a spin on it to keep the rate down stating it was to pay kids for jobs. But alas, that is not the case and many MW workers are primary bread winners.
President Roosevelt was quoted as saying "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, ...tell you...that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry."
Even he "got it" back then.
Greed
When corporations are posting their highest profits ever.
Greed
Cutting hours/cutting pay, no benefits.
Greed
Guiding their employees to welfare
Greed
Do some research, educate yourself.
MW prices many out of the job market. An employee must be with his wage. Many new employes are not worth their wages for a long period and some never do. What if the was a minimum price for refrigerators of $2k. Less would be sold.
ReplyDeleteWe'd just buy 'em from Mexico
ReplyDelete3:15 you're an idiot.
ReplyDelete3:31 you need to educate yourself in Econ 101. Let's see. We are going to give amnesty to 20 million illegals and raise the minimum wage. That should put some downward pressure on wages and hiring.
ReplyDelete3:37
ReplyDelete4.7% of the population is on MW
14% of the population is on food stamps
You need to educate yourself so that you don't look so stupid. Looks like you were not paying attention in class
increasing MW isn't the problem and will not cause a catastrophe
Annie. First of all Roosevelt was a progressive second the corporations that have these so called huge profits are the cronie capitalist who are friends of the progressives, the reason the stock market has done well is because they are printing billions of dollars every month, let's see how long that lasts. Third less hours is the direct result of obamacare. Employers would prefer to give their employees more hours except if they did they would be crushed by obamacare. Finally the only one pushing people toward welfare is Obama. Under his guidance the welfare roles are higher than they have been at any time in the history of this country. Your ignorance is why this country is becoming a socialist nation, but by reading your opinions you probably think that is a good thing
ReplyDelete3:47 it will cause fewer people to be able to enter the workforce because of raising the minimum wage is raising the barrier to entry. Most jobs are provided by small business not giant corporations. In North Carolinba they decreased the time on Unemployment benefits. Guess what happened. Unemployment went down 2%. Nothing like motivation!!
ReplyDelete3:55 you are funny. Ramble much? Your ignorance is not knowing history.
ReplyDeleteYour ignorance is that employers are greedy.
Your ignorance is that less than 5% of the population works for MW.
Your ignorance is that you are paying higher taxes and subsidizing their poor income from these wealthy corporations, thru welfare, food stamps and medicaid.
Your ignorance is that 29 states MW is higher than the federal standard.
You are very uninformed and ignorant.
4:00 really?
ReplyDeleteRaising the MW raises the barrier? To what? Flip burgers?
Most MW are small biz? Yea, Walmart, Target, McD are small biz.
In reference to NC. That did not go thru because it disqualified them for federal funds, and yea they skew the numbers here too.
Nice try, but you are still an idiot.
4:08 Most job creation is in small business dingdong
ReplyDelete3:47 That bill was enacted in August 2013
ReplyDeleteRALEIGH —
The state’s seasonally adjusted August unemployment rate was 8.7 percent, decreasing 0.2 of a percentage point from July’s revised rate of 8.9 percent.
The state's seasonally adjusted October unemployment rate was 8.0 percent, decreasing 0.3 of a percentage point from September's revised rate of 8.3 percent
So no, it did not go down 2%.
Plus they are trying to repeal it since it disqualifies them for federal funds.
Also, it was done on the the backs of the unemployed to repay the federal funds borrowed to cover previous extensions.
You are simply, wrong.
Party on.
the largest employer in the US is: the federal government.
ReplyDeletethen:
1. Wal-Mart 1,800,000
2. McDonald's 447,000
3. UPS 407,000
4. Sears 355,000
5. Home Depot 345,000
6. Target 337,000
7. IBM 329,373
8. General Motors 327,000
9. General Electric 316,000
10. Citigroup 303,000
are those small businesses?
ReplyDelete1:51 to Annie
Actually I have more than a clue. Have a combination of academics and decades of experience wrestling with these topics for demanding employers, both privately and publicly held, in for profit and not for profit segments. Explaining facts to employees, P&L responsibility and working the spreadsheets to convince VPs of what we could afford, and where we should pay more, or less. Been there, done that.
In 1938 my late Dad was working p/t in a butcher shop for $.10 per hour while in college; he graduated with a hard science degree at 19. In 1968 MW was $1.60/hr when I graduated HS at 16. I also worked my way through college; got raises from MW jobs based on performance. Usually paid .21 to .23 per gallon of gas then.
The MW took effect Oct 24, 1938 at .25/hr and a year later was bumped to .30/hr; six months after your hero FDR passed it went to .40/hr. (Don’t know if the 1945 bump was passed before he died; please feel free to disparage me for that omission). Here is the DOL page with the actual information http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm But check the 5 footnotes as you do your research; the first two are most germane to this discussion. 1 The 1938 Act was applicable generally to employees engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce.
2 The 1961 Amendments extended coverage primarily to employees in large retail and service enterprises as well as to local transit, construction, and gasoline service station employees.
So DOL’s first footnote shows the initial MW was narrowly applied to only a subset of jobs rather than your expansive interpretation. And in 1938, under FDR the top Federal income tax rate was 79%; it had risen to 94% when he passed. (Mr. Big would only retain $60/day of his $1,000 pay; still pretty fair but less impressive sounding). In that era executives making $260K annually would have been very few and far between so it was just the class envy demagoguery FDR and his acolytes OweBama, OweMalley and OweBrown run with 24/7. The 1938 Federal rate would have been 4% or less for MW earners.
In earlier posts you’ve claimed to be controller for several companies. I’m curious to know what your lowest paid employee makes and what the range is to your top paid official. I sleep peacefully safe in the knowledge that your staff is so well, fairly and evenly compensated that the proposed 39% increase won’t upset your applecart.
Some corporations are posting higher profits; those that don’t are savaged by the market, pension funds, etc and they recruit replacements for fired big-wigs. So pleased your response to a decline in revenue or dramatically increased costs at your job would be to hold steady; you are blessed with a deep pocketed, understanding boss.
Not adverse ever to anyone earning more provided it arises from their efforts in conjunction with their employer, as opposed to OweMalley etc ‘awarding’ an increase.
I will agree that there is a perverse effect also because larger operators have more resources to work with in dealing with these costs, but they cannot subsidize every store and every product. They are in the market’s cross hairs if their numbers backslide; the smaller operator is just out of business when sales lag or margins disappear. I lived through the Carter years and don’t want a return ticket; in some cases we were changing prices weekly in reaction to cost changes from suppliers on that frequency. With today’s computer links every transaction could become akin to buying an airline ticket.
When you kill the goose the golden eggs cease.
In closing, the article we are referring to was penned by a graduate student in journalism, an academic pursuit generally long on verbiage and rhetoric while dramatically short on math skills. However adept they maybe at googling this or that, they have scant life experience to bring to the equation.
Being rude is not the same as marshalling facts to make a point.
7:04 you offered no facts, and make broad unsubstantiated assumptions. You also falsely accuse me of making statements that I did not.
ReplyDeleteI am not the one who needs a history lesson. But I see you felt it necessary to post your version of it.
You also neglect to mention, thru all your uselessness, any and all other substantiated facts I have provided for your educational and reading pleasure. You offer no actual or valid retort to any point I have made, which goes to prove you have none.
And if you can not afford a step up increase of .50+ per employee then you should not be in business.
Sniping, lying, and sarcasm is not the same as marshalling facts to make a point either. You do not wear pompous ass well.
Annie, I never heard that the income tax rate was 94% What year was that, and who was affected?
ReplyDelete7:32 I did not write the comment so you would have to ask the poster who did.
ReplyDeleteThank you 6:18. For those that missed it, note how many of those companies pay minimum wage.
ReplyDelete8:43 the top 6 do.
ReplyDeleteHalf of Walmart workers made less than $22,400 in 2012, according to PayScale, which is below poverty level for a family of four.
Sorry NC unemployment went from 9.5 to 7.5%
ReplyDelete"Republican Gov. Pat McCrory responded after taking office in 2013 by pushing a measure to cut weekly benefits to a maximum of $350 from a previous high of $535. And people could only draw benefits for 12 to 20 weeks instead of the normal 26. The law took effect July 1, 2013.
So what happened? North Carolina’s jobless rate rose a notch to 8.9% in July and then began a steady descent: 8.7% in August, 8.3% in September, 8.0% in October and a preliminary 7.4% in November, according to U.S. Labor Department figures."
5
Sorry but is a numbers scam.
ReplyDelete"Since the reduction in unemployment insurance, North Carolina’s unemployment rate has dropped over 1 percent. However, 100,000 North Carolinians also left the workforce altogether, which meant they were not counted as unemployed, creating an artificial decrease in the unemployment rate.
That is just one opinion. Here is another "Yet other data sets seem to tell a different tale. A more optimistic view of what happened in North Carolina comes from a new paper (pdf) led by Marcus Hagedorn of the University of Oslo. He and his three co-authors sifted through the Census Bureau's "household survey" and the "establishment survey" for the same period. And the results were surprising.
ReplyDeleteWhat they found is that overall employment has actually gone up in North Carolina since benefits got cut in June of 2013. The household survey in particular showed an increase in both employment and labor force participation. But both surveys suggested that North Carolina's labor force is growing, not shrinking:"
And there was a mass exodus of unemployed who left the state for greener pastures.
ReplyDeleteNot sure why Norways opinion on the subject is more valid.
Again, just like here in Wicomico, play with the number to fit your political agenda.
If what you say is true, then why are they trying to repeal it. Sorta invalidates your "study".
8:26 here is an opinion from someone in the US.
ReplyDeleteTom Tiemann, professor of economics at Elon University, said the reduction and eventual loss of unemployment insurance in North Carolina hurts the state’s chances of regaining jobs.
Tiemann addressed the theory that a loss of unemployment insurance would further encourage individuals to find work because they would need a paycheck even more.
“If there’s no jobs to be had, it doesn’t make any difference,” Tiemann said.
If you search long enough you will find the truth.....
ReplyDeleteStraight from the Governors mouth
Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) claimed this weekend that gutting the state’s unemployment benefits has sent people back to where “they came from,” presumably because they moved to the state only to collect “very generous benefits” for unemployment.
Asked by NC Spin why North Carolina’s employment numbers have dropped dramatically since signing the unemployment bill, McCrory pointed to the state disqualifying itself from long-term federal benefits for the unemployed last year:
We had the ninth most generous unemployment compensation in the country and we were having a lot of people move here, frankly, especially in urban areas to get unemployment and then work other sectors and survive. So, people were moving here because of our very generous benefits, and then of course, we had more debt. So I think, personally, more people got off unemployment and either got jobs or moved back to where they were going or came from and quit the migration as much because of unemployment. We’ve seen this in other states where the benefits are very high, it could draw people from outside the state.
According to spokesperson Kim Genardo, McCrory based his logic on “personal stories he’s heard.” But WRAL points out that it is doubtful unemployed workers were relocating to North Carolina for the generous unemployment benefits. Residents must have worked in the state for at least six months of the last 15 to prove eligibility for the program.
In fact, the very sources the governor’s office cite for evidence all make a case in favor of continuing benefits: Unemployment insurance is a strong incentive to find work, since recipients must actively search for a job in order to collect. But the opposite scenario is now happening in North Carolina: The unemployment rate has fallen a percentage point, but that likely has a lot to do with people dropping out of the labor force. As the length of benefits shortened from 99 weeks to 19, 170,000 people lost federal benefits and others saw their weekly checks fall by nearly $200.
In the wake of that change, the state has seen its labor participation shrink to a 37-year low (sound familiar?)
Either way the state spends less and the feds spend less and no one is starving. We live in the land of fat poor people.
ReplyDelete10:58 really?
ReplyDeleteUnemployment is cheaper than welfare, which is where they end up.
Didn't fully think your comment through there did ya?
98% of poverty is caused by dropping out of school, having kids out of wedlock, and drugs and alcohol. All are free choices.
ReplyDelete11:16 It is the same as welfare when you extend benefits without raising unempolyment premiums.
ReplyDelete12:06
ReplyDeleteYou have millions paying into the unemployment pool that never collect.
Same with Social Security, people who have paid in for years and die early and never collect.
The amount that employers pay for unemployment is small, generally around $300 per employee per year.
When unemployment was low and all that money was sitting there, where did it go? You have decades of money sitting in a pool.
People in a typical sense only collected for 6 months. The recent extensions are not typical of the standard payout.
Back in the 80's or 90's there was a time when employees had to contribute funds to the pool because a similar depression resulted in high unemployment and a high volume of payouts and the government wanted the funds replenished.
6:35
ReplyDeleteEmployees do not pay into unemployment. The employer pays unemployment insurance but no money it taken from an employees check. The more an employers lays off or fires the higher their unemployment insurance goes.
So the state and federal governments are flush with cash?!
ReplyDelete