Text 17484, 111 rader
Skriven 2006-01-21 08:34:52 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 17476 av LEE LOFASO (1:123/140)
Ärende: "Wal-Mart" bill
=======================
LEE LOFASO -> JOHN HULL wrote:
 LL> Hello John,

 LL>>> Liberals want fiscal sanity, with fair taxation for everyone.


 JH>> Hey, Lee, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!  You ever heard of fast food
 LL> joints?
 JH>> Mickey D, Burger King, etc.?  Those places have been hiring people
 LL> for decad
 JH>> as part-time employees.  They seldom if ever give anybody enough
 LL> hours to
 JH>> qualify for benefits from the company, and will fire their ass at the
 LL> drop o
 JH>> hat.  Why?  Because the quality of the people they get is problematic
 LL> to sta
 JH>> with - functionally illiterate in many cases - and they can't afford
 LL> to pay
 JH>> somebody benefits who can't cut it in the working world.

 LL> Fast food joints in New Orleans have been hiring kitchen crew with
 LL> great pay, roughly $1500 per month for full time employment.  Not bad
 LL> for flipping burgers.  Part-timers are making $800-$1000 per month.
 LL> Of course, that is post-Katrina.

 LL> In any event, the only fiscal conservatives that exist are liberals.

 JH>> I've got friends who own and run fast food joints.  They would give
 LL> anything
 JH>> be able to hire good people who show up for work on time, every time,
 LL> and wh
 JH>> can do the job without constant supervision.  They would LOVE to pay
 LL> those
 JH>> people higher wages.  But they can't afford to because the government
 LL> forces
 JH>> them to pay a high minimum wage to people who are essentially
 LL> unemployable,
 JH>> they compensate by only hiring part-timers at the lowest possible
 LL> wage.  If
 JH>> somebody shows potential they will promote them out of the the pack,
 LL> but tho
 JH>> types are rare as hen's teeth.

 LL> Better pay, especially with benefits, will attract good workers.
 LL> Lousy pay, with no benefits, will attract the dumb and dumber.

 LL> There is an old adage, "You get what you pay for."  If the owner of
 LL> an NFL team wants his team to win the Super Bowl, he's going to have
 LL> to fork out the bucks to get the players who can get there and win
 LL> it.  If an NFL wins, the fans will show up for the games, no matter
 LL> where the games are played.  If an NFL team loses, fans will choose
 LL> to spend their time doing something else.  The same is true of any
 LL> business.  A fast food joint which makes lousy burgers is not going
 LL> to sell many burgers.  A fast food joint which makes great burgers
 LL> is going to sell a lot of burgers.  By paying higher wages, the
 LL> company makes more profits.  Gotta spend money to make money.
 LL> Simple economics.

 LL> Conservatives are political conservatives, not fiscal conservatives.
 LL> "Spend a nickel to save a dime" generally means "You get what you pay
 LL> for" - which is fiscal insanity.  It might sound good to spend less,
 LL> but the reality is that one winds up spending more - meaning lower
 LL> profits.

 JH>> And now, you want to allow NJ to jump on WalMart - who typically gets
 LL> severa
 JH>> hundred applicants for every job they have when a store opens - and
 LL> force th
 JH>> to incur higher costs for no return.  How Democratic of you.

 LL> The economy is for the person.  Not the other way around.  By paying
 LL> a living wage, with inclusion of health benefits, companies would make
 LL> more profits.  Not less.  After all, with healthy employees who show
 LL> up for work on time, there is more production and less turnover.

You're a damn fool.  A high minimum wage has all but eliminated the entry level
jobs where teenagers traditionally earned their wings in the adult world of
working for a living.  They don't have the discipline one needs to hold down a
job, showing up when they feel like it - or not at all - but expecting a
paycheck on payday as if they had.  They are functionally illiterate, so they
can't read, write, or do basic math adequately enough to do the job right.  Why
do you think all the cash registers in fast food joints have picture icons on
the keys instead of normal numbers and letters?

Owners of fast food businesses are forced to hire two or three times as many
people as they need because they can't rely on them to show up when they are
scheduled to, so they need a pool to draw on.  The turnover rate in such
businesses is horrific.  For every dozen they hire, maybe one or two will last
six months.  The rest will either just quit showing up or get fired for theft
or some other inappropriate behavior.

I've got a friend who is a manager at a Burger King. He has to work about 60
hours a week between three stores because of the teens and young adults who
don't show up when they are supposed to.  His wife divorced him because he was
always getting called into work when somebody didn't show up for the late
shift, or on a Saturday or Sunday.
But he can't afford to cut back because he's got two kids in college, and the
30K a year he makes is spread pretty thin.

And one last thing.  If you don't enjoy paying $2.49 for a burger that cost you
$1.00 ten years ago, you can blame that on minimum wage also. In order to
compensate for the extra overhead in wages and training expense, in addition to
normal inflation, they had to raise the prices of the product to cover cost.

So, your living wage is bullshit.  Try talking to the people who actually work
for a living and have to deal with the crap you liberals force down our
throats.  Not that you will of course, you're too f*cking busy telling us how
to live.

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