OT: $15/hour minimum wage coming to Seattle

Round here, small businesses just start hiring illegal aliens, who aren't likely to complain to the government about being paid below minimum wage. Folks who obey the rules get screwed.

Everybody is for that. The disagreement is over the unintended consequences of yet more government interference. If the government enforced the immigration laws, there would be a lot less unskilled labour chasing wages to the bottom.

I charge different rates for expert witness work and engineering.

If I were helping out in the local hardware store on weekends, I wouldn't expect to make the same rate as on weekdays.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

But you don't help out at the local hardware store. If you had no expert witness work and *needed* to work at the hardware store to make ends meet, would you turn down expert witness work that paid the same??? I doubt it.

Perspective is everything.

The various leftist rants about "living wages" almost never mention legal and illegal immigration. All sorts of agricultural, construction, roofing, painting, and restaurant work is being done by immigrants without a lot of education or language skills, and who will work hard, off the books, cheap. That depresses the market for citizen workers, especially black folks.

Around here, basically all the painters and roofers and gardeners and cement finishers are Mexican (unless it's a Chinese project, in which the workers are mostly non-English speaking Chinese.)

The cost of hiring legally is not just the minimum wage, it includes all the added fees and overheads. The workman's comp insurance cost for construction jobs can be 100% of the wages. Overall, a legal worker making mandatory "prevailing wages" could cost 5x what an illegal one does.

Yes, I would. Destroying a market doesn't help anybody.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Really? How does it depress wages for "black folk" more than others? I know first hand plenty of people who work for minimum wage or close to it. You could run every illegal taxi driver and construction and restaurant worker out of the country and they would not make one more penny.

What you ignore is that while you characterize the illegals as "without a lot of education or language skills", that sounds like a lot of the people around here who I have to talk to in *their* language to be understood and may have graduated high school but can't even add fractions.

Then you criticize the illegals for working "hard". LOL Since when is being willing to work hard... in fact harder than others, a negative quality? That goes against all the "free market" crap you spout. Sounds to me like you are saying the blacks are lazy... no?

Now you are talking through your hat. I pay workman's comp and it is a tiny fraction of expenses even for construction work.

If you don't like illegal workers, then do something about that. But don't try to connect it all with the minimum wage. That is just pure BS... or who is the guy who says everyone who disagrees with him is a liar? I won't say you are lying, but I will say that I've heard 87.25% of all statistics are made up.

I say you wouldn't. You say you would from the comfort of your swivel chair typing on your computer in your office or comfy home. If you had to actually live off the wages paid in a hardware store you would be singing a different tune.

Hell, I was just 18 when I gave up a job in a hardware store for one that paid $0.15 an hour better. I've never had to even look at working in a hardware store since. That's a luxury you and I have that many others don't.

You either don't listen to anything they say or don't understand it.

I've had ups and downs myself. The thing is, that if I did expert work for $10 per hour, I'd be a $10-per-hour expert and never get another gig. Destroying a market is the wrong answer.

Price is one of the cues customers gauge quality by, and there's a lot of money at stake in your average IP lawsuit.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That is the way I see it also. I retired and about a year later the plant was doing a large building project and wanted me to come back for a short time. I was an instrument technician. Calibrated and installed instruments in a large plant. I gave them a price of just under twice what I was making when I retired. They had always said thta was what we were making if the insurance and other benefits were included. As I had none, Thought that was fair. They just wanted to pay what I was making an hour. Did not need the work or really want to do it,so I passed on the low pay.

You really don't have to prove that you're a moron.

Too stupid. Ricky is a lefty, after all.

Exactly right. FDR caused the depth and length of the depression. The programs sounded good, if you ignore the unintended consequences. The latest recession and lack of recovery is another example that you'll refuse to admit.

That's my point. You don't need the work. Phil doesn't either. He is judging the decision by his thinking now without realizing just how bad things can be... and *are* for some.

If you had lost your home to a fire and the insurance company wasn't paying you nearly enough to rebuild and other conditions made it necessary to work, you would have been *happy* to take the straight pay.

You are both proving my point. Thank you.

That's true only if there's a shortage of senators.

A reporter for KIRO claims to have contacted the two restaurant owners cite d in the original blog post, and says that neither of them was closing beca use of the higher minimum wage. The reporter also said that one owner adm itted to closing one restaurant, but was opening three others.

Just because I disagree with you doesn't make me a fool, Rick. That's a typical leftist rhetorical ploy when they don't have anything left but repeating what they said earlier. (Google for "Bulverism".)

If I had some reason to believe that the market for my services would never recover, e.g. if I suffered serious brain damage, that would have to be re-evaluated. Your guy wanting more money for electrical work is being perfectly rational, even if he can't get electrical work full time.

Cheers

Phil

You can apply any labels you wish, but you still aren't acknowledging the logic. If you need money and the only work you can find is your high end work at a low end wage, you would take it.

Just as the price of milk is very flexible as the demand is not, when you need to eat you do what work you can. You seem to be incapable of picturing yourself in that situation and keep talking about markets and quality. You don't have to be brain damaged to become desperate.

BTW, the guy never turned down my $15 an hour.

I keep telling you that isn't true, and you don't believe me. This is _me_ we're talking about, after all.

Expert work comes and goes, just like your friend's electrical work. If I did anything so stupid as you suggest, it would never come back, so that I would have a large net loss.

But desperate people have compassionate leftists to look after them, right?

Of course you didn't take in to account what he needed to live on, did you?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs