Alberta Politics Thread

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

My friend (who's in his mid-20s) owns and operates a restaurant in Okotoks. He works everyday and is able to employ one hostess, one waitress, and one cook. He's terrified of what this hike will do to his business, because unlike what a lot of people think the margins for small town small business are razor thin. The restaurant is barely getting by as it is.

The cumulative effect of people like my friend going out of business is what the anti crowd here is against. Small business isn't lucrative but it is a big chunk of our economy, one that's already taken a pretty big hit. Is it fair that his 17 year old hostess, doing a job literally anyone can do, receives an artificially inflated wage and forces him to the close the doors of a restaurant he invested his life and savings in? One party has a lot more at stake here than the other.

No one ####ing cares about Walmart going out of business, it's a stupid example because it never will. If you wanna say my friend deserves to go under because of terrible business practices that's fine, but it would mean ceding the high ground moral position you all seem to love.

If he is paying his employees minimum wage and his restaurant is barely getting by as is, is it in your opinion a business model that is going to be successful in the long run?

To say literally anyone can be a hostess is simply an exaggeration. A good hostess needs to be presentable, friendly, have good customer service skills and most importantly needs to show up to work. Since most restaurants require a hostess or hostesses for their business to succeed, they play an important role in that business' success and you can bet that having the first person a customer deals with at your business being competent at their job will impact your business in a positive way. Especially in the service industry.

Why would claiming your friend runs his business poorly make any impact on my position for minimum wage to be raised? Because he should just be allowed to have a business that is run poorly? Because he may need to reduce the number of people he employs to stay profitable or at the very least just scrape by? The way you've explained it, it seems like he should already be reducing his staff. I mean he has 1 hostess for a restaurant the only needs 1 waitress and 1 cook? Sounds like something out of an episode of Hell's Kitchen.

I wouldn't have an issue with him making the sensible business decision to reduce his staff by 1 employee because frankly he is putting the other 3 people (himself included) who work there at risk of being out of work with his business model anyways by paying someone who he obviously does not need to have there. If there are 2 people on his payroll instead of 3 and he can afford to pay them better, that will give them the ability to spend more of their income which will stimulate the economy and create growth which will lead to a job for the individual who wasn't needed. It would also give the owner more money to expand his business which would have the same effect, if he's running under a financially viable business model.

Now you may be chomping at the bit reading this to say "yeah but when they raise the minimum wage he'll be screwed either way". Let's take a look at the numbers. If he currently has 3 workers making minimum wage working 40 hours per week he is paying $23.5k per year for each employee. So that would be about $70.5k per year total. That's if they are all paid minimum wage. So if the minimum wage goes up to $15/hour he will be be paying $3.80/per hour more. That would be $7.9k more that each each employee would earn, however it is not necessarily an exact representation of how much it would reduce the employers profits.

Locke would probably be the most up to speed on how small business tax and deductions are calculated, but if I'm not mistake your employees' wages are deductible under an operational expense. As I said I'm not 100% sure about how it works so we'll look at both scenarios. If the employer is able to deduct $7.9k that means he will not have to pay tax on those earnings, so if small businesses pay 11% federal and 3% provincial tax that means the employer would have only received about $6.8k of that had it been kept in profit.

Now again I will admit I could be off with the tax deductible part, so if I am the total your friend would need to pay extra in wages per year for his 3 employees would be $23.7k. If he needs to get rid of his hostess to get his labour costs back in line with what they were he would be paying his staff of 2 $62.4k per year, so his costs would be less albeit the waitress would be doing more work. The $8.1k he would have left over could either be kept as profit and taxed or go towards hiring a part time worker for 10 hours a week. If my understanding about the tax deductions part is correct, the actual costs to the employer from their profits to pay those 2 remaining workers $15.8k in total extra salary is about $13.6k of the owners gross profit.

So in response to your point about the cumulative effect on people like your friend going out of business does not carry a lot of weight in this instance. He is not going to be put out of business because of an artificially inflated wage, he is going to be put out of business due to an artificially created job that was made because he decided if he could get someone cheap enough it would be convenient to and sensible to hike to have them work there.

It is crucial for economic growth to have people driving the economy by generating revenue for businesses. So 2 good jobs where the employee is compensated a wage that allows them to contribute to this growth is better than 3 jobs where none of them can contribute and likely rely on subsidies to get by. He used to his advantage the fact that people want/need to work and there are only so many jobs available to his advantage to employ this individual at the lowest wage possible.

Before minimum wage was around this practice was rampant and the thing I think a lot of people fail to realize is with all the advancements society has made in so many areas, we've really begun to take major steps backwards in regards to power and wealth distribution we as individuals have. Slave labour was a horrible thing for many reasons, the biggest being human living standards were atrocious. Yet we seem to be fine with allowing ourselves to continually creep closer towards how things were. I'm not trying to sensationalize things by suggesting we are all going to be making pennies. What I'm talking about is how much financial power a large percentage of society seems to be willingly sacrificing to employers.

It was mentioned earlier in this thread, and mind you it has to also do with global economics. But if an oil company can just up and leave the province to go drill somewhere else because the cost is too high here, they are not suffering we are, they are going to make money somewhere else while we sit here and pick up the pieces. When we allow companies to have that kind of leverage over us we are giving them too much power. Companies should be able to make money, but they shouldn't be allowed to hold us back from succeeding because we allow them to pay us a wage that robs of of the opportunity, Nor should we be continuing to have an industry who's major players up and leave when it's convenient to be the backbone of our economy.

If businesses cannot be relied upon to at least intend to have a positive and secure impact of the economy, the lives of its workers and it's owners, the good which comes from having those businesses around will not outweigh the bad. That's my opinion.

[northcrunk]

What a load of bollox

[puckedoff]

^ I agree with iggy_oi above. If Dirac's friend's business model can't compete under a regime of increasing wages and taxes, his local restaurant can go under. A McDonald's can take up residence where his business used to be, and they can squeeze international suppliers to make up for the difference in wages. This way profits can go overseas and employment can be more efficiently used elsewhere. Win win.

[Shazam]

So zero employees have jobs instead of three. Well that works out gooder.

[OMG!WTF!]

If he is paying his employees minimum wage and his restaurant is barely getting by as is, is it in your opinion a business model that is going to be successful in the long run?

Yes. Absolutely. See every successful restaurant chain in Canada for thin margins, small profits repeated dozens of times to create large profits. Also no one in the restaurant industry actually makes minimum wage. All of the people you're trying to help are going to lose money because of this. Restaurant employees are the worst example you can come up with here.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

So put simply, you want the employer to subsidize the individual's relative lack of contribution to society?



As mentioned, the formula is already in wide use. The knowledge and skill required x the number of people capable and willing to do it. A shortage on either side of this will drive wages up. As I noted has occurred even with minimum value tasks when in a labour shortage.

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

****, so stupid. If the McDonald's burger becomes too expensive (relative to a certain long-established price point that an economist can figure out for you based on historic prices/consumption rates), a certain number of people (the higher the price, the more people) will stop going to McD's and will BBQ their own burgers. Same with lawn cutting. Say I pay $40 for lawn maintenance. If the price goes up to $55 (or whatever, based on the aforementioned price/consumption ratios), I will get off my lazy ass and cut my own lawn. All those "living wage" earning burger artists and lawn jockeys will have no jobs now because a certain number of consumers will be priced out of the market. To see what happens then, look at France. Locke is right. Everyone who disagrees with him is wrong.

Do you both feel that someone is making more of a contribution to society by being unemployed or on welfare than they would by being a tax paying worker?

I just can't wrap my head around how you continually attack people working these jobs as somehow less important than others making the same contribution to the workforce. As far as prices going up, we the consumers will dictate what a place can charge us, if the price is too high we don't buy it.

Big companies like macdonalds can absorb these extra costs with missing a beat, if you disagree you're simply not looking at the facts. While a smaller business may be put in jeopardy, they will have options to address it. If the end result is they are no longer a profitable business and close down, it may reduce the number of people they employed however the money those companies were making will go to the remaining employers who are able to run a business without needing tax payers to subsidize their work force. This in turn will create growth within those companies which will lead to jobs for those who were left jobless when the non profitable company went belly up.

The lack of empathy towards workers by some posters in this thread is shocking. You're a single mom trying to keep your kids off the streets? Deal with it! You're a young adult who grew up in poverty and are trying to work towards becoming educated in a higher paying field or industry? Figure it out!

And the argument of creating MORE social assistance programs to help these people without an expectation of having employers who choose to run a business only because they can make money while keeping people poor being held accountable to contribute comes off as extremely hypocritical.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

Yes. Absolutely. See every successful restaurant chain in Canada for thin margins, small profits repeated dozens of times to create large profits. Also no one in the restaurant industry actually makes minimum wage. All of the people you're trying to help are going to lose money because of this. Restaurant employees are the worst example you can come up with here.

I was responding to his specific example, so if his example is so out of line why are you only attacking my response?

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

If he is paying his employees minimum wage and his restaurant is barely getting by as is...

I think that if you applied yourself to work as much as you did to typing up garbage on the internet, you would no longer be complaining about low wages.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

This is the part you guys get wrong all the time. We can and should increase the minimum wage every year...but by much smaller increments. All of your socialist bliss research on minimum wage increases goes right out the window when you apply a 50% increase over basically two years.

Also the one you you can't argue with (unless you live in Quebec) is that a booming economy is best for both employers and employees. Alberta has had the highest average wage, the lowest number of minimum wage earners, the lowest poverty numbers for years. Minimum wage is only an issue now because we're trying to reinvent our wheel.

Maybe if minimum wage had been raised every year as it should have when things were booming we would already be at $15/hour and not having this debate.

Also going from $11.20/hour to $15/hour is not a 50% increase more like 34%. While still substancial, falls about 1/3 short of what you are claiming which is significant.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Maybe if minimum wage had been raised every year as it should have when things were booming we would already be at $15/hour and not having this debate.

Also going from $11.20/hour to $15/hour is not a 50% increase more like 34%. While still substancial, falls about 1/3 short of what you are claiming which is significant.

There's a bankground increase in EI, CPP etc that needs to be taken into account. Remember that the employee pays on that as well.

[automaton 3]

iggy_oi - the tax offset more or less amounts to pissing into the wind. Cold comfort when you are losing money. Employer will pay more on their share of CPP and EI as well.

Bottom line is that due to external factors outside of this owner's control (government intervention in this case) the owner can work more hours himself and reduce staff hours (he is already working every day) or try to increase prices to offset the wage increase, or he can say it isn't worth it and fold.

Unrelated but a friend with a construction company just laid off all his staff. Says that they are getting ground so hard by general contractors right now that he and his partner found themselves taking work simply to pay their employees and there is no hope of a change in sight, so they chose to stop.

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I was responding to his specific example, so if his example is so out of line why are you only attacking my response?

The example wasn't out of line. It's a very common story in the restaurant industry. So for you to say it's a bad business model is just painfully ignorant. Quite frankly if your current business model allowed for a 50% increase in your largest expense, you would have a failed business model. It wouldn't be working. You'd have no customers because either your service or your product or your price would be out of line with industry standards. Just use the WalMart example and you can wing it from there.

[CaptainCrunch]

Just to point to this because it really resonated

To say literally anyone can be a hostess is simply an exaggeration. A good hostess needs to be presentable, friendly, have good customer service skills and most importantly needs to show up to work. Since most restaurants require a hostess or hostesses for their business to succeed, they play an important role in that business' success and you can bet that having the first person a customer deals with at your business being competent at their job will impact your business in a positive way. Especially in the service industry.

None of those are high skills demands they are expectations in every single job out there, so probably 75 to 80% of people could do that job with a day or two of training.

Not to sluff off on hostesses or even waiters, but frankly someone with a grade 10 education is pretty capable of doing those jobs.

Besides the fact that beyond minimum wage these people are making a lot of money on tips and shared tips.

A minimum wage job like hostessing or waitress probably isn't the best example of why minimum wage needs to be boosted because frankly these are jobs designed for more casual workers or student workers.

If you want to argue about a person swinging a shovel on a construction or road job for minimum wage those are more ment to be transitional or temporary positions or as needed positions, but I can tell you that the people that go in and make themselves valuable usually find themselves making more money, making more overtime and getting on site training as those companies want to keep those guys.

Those labor positions with site cleanup and digging holes or whatever are more designed to weed out the people that don't have it to continue to work in those trades.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Big companies like macdonalds can absorb these extra costs with missing a beat, if you disagree you're simply not looking at the facts.

To be fair the individual locations across NA are run by franchise owners and operated as such. I know the franchise owner here in High River.

Absorbing extra costs without a beat is not always true. He can't just raise his prices when wages go up as that is a corprorate decison. If sales are bad in his region he gets no help from the corp. It doesn't matter if the new Kiosk system is a joke, he still has to use it.

[GaiJin]

Originally Posted by Ducay

$15 won't be a living wage once the new labour costs get priced into goods & services.

Do people really think increasing the minimum wage just magically makes everyone richer with no impact? If it was, why wouldn't everyone be in support of it?

Of course, which begs the question why stop at $15, hell let's make everyone rich and go right to $100, if it has no impact on the economy as Notley is saying currently.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Shazam

So zero employees have jobs instead of three. Well that works out gooder.

I guess all the money patrons were spending at that restaurant(or any business) that closed down will simply go under their mattress. There's no chance they would spend that money at other businesses. Since there's no chance of that, then by default there would be no chance of those other businesses seeing growth and creating new jobs. No chance any of that happens at all. I guess the only thing we know for certain is that raising the minimum wage can't possibly have good benefits that outweigh the bad.

I find it interesting how people seem to try to justify their argument by creating a timeline of events and then stopping as soon as it's convenient for their argument.

Phase 1- raise minimum wage

Phase 2- employer goes out of business, employees can't work there anymore

Phase 3- ???? (What happens then? Armageddon? Zombie apocalypse?)

As opposed to

Phase 1- Maintain current minimum wage

Phase 2- ?????

Phase 3- Profit! (For employers)

[troutman]

35% of Albertans don’t make enough money to cover their bills, debt payments: study

http://globalnews.ca/news/2969724/35...ayments-study/

Alberta’s consumer debt is the highest in the country and the number of Albertans who can’t pay their bills or repay debt continues to grow, a new study shows.

“Albertans have come to rely on cheap credit to fund their lifestyles and a significant number are now adding even more debt obligations as a result of job losses,” Alam said. “But interest rates will eventually rise. Those who already feel overwhelmed by their debt should seek professional help now.”

[corporatejay]

Did Iggy_Oi just say that the most important skill required for a hostess (whose job is apparently not easy) is showing up?

For eff sakes, that is not a skill that is literally the most basic part of being employed.

[Ozy_Flame]

Trout - does that mean that bankruptcies will be on the stark rise? I'm genuinely curious.

[PsYcNeT]

This thread is a bad right-leaning editorial cartoon encapsulated.













And a Kelly cartoon for levity.