Alberta Politics Thread

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

From what I read it seemed like an upset owner trying to gain appeasement, he even makes a couple of contradicting statements in his rant. At one point saying he needs to make job cuts and reduce hours to make up the $130k shortfall, to then claiming it will bankrupt him. He actually provides a lot of good information to really drive home how broken his business model must be.

He claims to have used about 26000 in man hours to run his restaurant. So that would equal about 71 hours used per day, or about 9 full time workers. At the current minimum wage rates he is paying approximately $800 in labour each day. In 3 years he will be paying $130k annually or $356/day more in labour. Now assuming his labour hours calculation did not include himself, in order for him to still be making a $130k annual profit when the minimum wage goes to $15/hour, he would need to be currently making a $712 profit per day on his investment of $800 per day on labour alone. Even if he was only currently making $500/day profit it would still be profitable after the wage increase. If he is currently only making a profit of $356/day(which would indeed bankrupt him with the wage increase), then his return on his current investment is not very good to begin with and sadly would likely be made worse with rising food prices and a loss in business due to the economy. In which case it might help to have some currently minimum wage paid workers to be given a boost so they can maybe become patrons at his restaurant and pass the boost on.

If $15/hour is debatably a living wage as you've claimed, how would they be able to afford going out to restaurants?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by PaperBagger'14

If $15/hour is debatably a living wage as you've claimed, how would they be able to afford going out to restaurants?

The bottom line is they won't because of the "Broken business model" the owner will probably have to increase the menu and drink costs to make up for the minimum wage increase so the worker that wants to eat at that restaurant isn't going to find an increase in spending power.

Its the same with other businesses that employ minimum wage workers, they increase their pricing to make up for it, so the buying power of the minimum wage earner doesn't increase that much because everything becomes more expensive.

It just looks good in a newspaper article that minimum wage increases. At the end of the day it doesn't address the root problem of what we can do to improve their earning potential, I would tend to think things like educational and training programs would have been a better place to spend them money personally.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Locke

Okay, I usually dont dig the heavy stuff on Sunday nights, but here goes:

Gain appeasement? From who? You do realize hes not in a Union right? The Government isnt just going to give him money to make him happy and vote for them?

Whats your solution?

It sounds to me like you're advocating a standard compensation?

"He doesnt need to make that much money. He should be spreading it around more."

Let them eat cake?

More and more often I keep thinking that before you become awarded with your Union Membership card you should have to be in Business for yourself for a year.

Just for some perspective. Its rough.

It seems like people think you just head to the registry office, incorporate and then just wait for the cash to roll in!

The only business model that you could call consistently successful and where you put up a shingle so to speak and the cash starts rolling in are Drug Dealers and Pimps.

There's this fallacy that its easy to make money in a small business, and its so wrong that it hurts. For the most part opening a small business means that you lose a lot of money until you establish your market place and if you get noticed by a bigger business in the same sector they actively work to undercut you and destroy you before you can get a foothold.

I know a lot of small business owners that don't make gobs of money business wise and usually take a pretty steep haircut on the personal income side to get their business established.

And then when they get to the point of expansion or adding employees it becomes a whole other battle because one bad hire can have nuclear explosion like effects on your business unlike bigger business that can absorb the hiring and onboarding to effectiveness cycle.

Personally Iggy and no slight intended, but throwing out the whole "They don't have a good business model" is about as clueless as they come, especially in the restaurant and bar business which is extremely cut throat especially with so many big player franchise stores out there that group buy their supplies.

The writer of that letter to the sun, laid out some pretty strong math and you chose to ignore it.

[CaptainCrunch]

Personally the real solution to the minimum wage thing for businesses is to no longer employ low end and minimum wage workers, but to bring in a much smaller more effective and trained staff.

so now you have nobody getting hired in entry level positions and getting key training. That training becomes someone else problem.

And then you basically multi-role those people. Especially in an economically tough environment like this one.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

From what I read it seemed like an upset owner trying to gain appeasement, he even makes a couple of contradicting statements in his rant. At one point saying he needs to make job cuts and reduce hours to make up the $130k shortfall, to then claiming it will bankrupt him. He actually provides a lot of good information to really drive home how broken his business model must be.

He claims to have used about 26000 in man hours to run his restaurant. So that would equal about 71 hours used per day, or about 9 full time workers. At the current minimum wage rates he is paying approximately $800 in labour each day. In 3 years he will be paying $130k annually or $356/day more in labour. Now assuming his labour hours calculation did not include himself, in order for him to still be making a $130k annual profit when the minimum wage goes to $15/hour, he would need to be currently making a $712 profit per day on his investment of $800 per day on labour alone. Even if he was only currently making $500/day profit it would still be profitable after the wage increase. If he is currently only making a profit of $356/day(which would indeed bankrupt him with the wage increase), then his return on his current investment is not very good to begin with and sadly would likely be made worse with rising food prices and a loss in business due to the economy. In which case it might help to have some currently minimum wage paid workers to be given a boost so they can maybe become patrons at his restaurant and pass the boost on.

A $130,000 shortfall is not a loss of profit of $130,000.

Stop using NDP math. You just argued a whole lot of nothing.

[peter12]

I love how socialists get all Social Darwinian when it comes to businesses surviving their increasingly onerous taxes.

It's like the dinosaurs and the meteorite. Well, if they can't survive a giant catastrophic dust cloud, then #### 'em.

[puckedoff]

Originally Posted by peter12

I love how socialists get all Social Darwinian when it comes to businesses surviving their increasingly onerous taxes.

It's like the dinosaurs and the meteorite. Well, if they can't survive a giant catastrophic dust cloud, then #### 'em.

Fine line between healthy profits (Capitalist Pigs!) and weak or zero margins (deserve to fail!)

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Handsome B. Wonderful

A $130,000 shortfall is not a loss of profit of $130,000.

Stop using NDP math. You just argued a whole lot of nothing.

If they're making a 10% profit they need to increase their sales by over a million. If its a 20% profit then its about a half million. Thats pretty tough to make up.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by puckedoff

Fine line between healthy profits (Capitalist Pigs!) and weak or zero margins (deserve to fail!)

I guess that means Canada Post deserves to fail...

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by peter12

I love how socialists get all Social Darwinian when it comes to businesses surviving their increasingly onerous taxes.

It's like the dinosaurs and the meteorite. Well, if they can't survive a giant catastrophic dust cloud, then #### 'em.

Naturally. The employer is always wrong.

Reminds me of that argument I had with somebody during the last lockout about the players organizing their own league. He put absolutely no thought into the risks associated with operating a business - especially in competition with the NHL - and failed to understand why there isn't a players' league. The workers don't want that risk. They just want the guaranteed paycheque.

[para transit fellow]

Minimum Wage conundrum

Why must my taxes pay for the financial support programs that an entrepreneur requires for staff when their business only pays staff minimum wage?

if someone can answer this, I will support a lower minimum wage.

anyone?
anyone?
Buhler?

anyone?

[corporatejay]

Okay, so let's get rid of social programs? What are you arguing?

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

Minimum Wage conundrum

Why must my taxes pay for the financial support programs that an entrepreneur requires for staff when their business only pays staff minimum wage?

if someone can answer this, I will support a lower minimum wage.

anyone?
anyone?
Buhler?

anyone?

How about you let us know which financial support programs you complain about so someone could actually answer?

Your question is asinine the way it is posed, its not possible to answer. I don't even understand how you link it to minimum wage.

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

Minimum Wage conundrum

Why must my taxes pay for the financial support programs that an entrepreneur requires for staff when their business only pays staff minimum wage?

if someone can answer this, I will support a lower minimum wage.

anyone?
anyone?
Buhler?

anyone?

What makes you certain a higher minimum wage won't result in more social costs coming your tax paying way?

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

Minimum Wage conundrum

Why must my taxes pay for the financial support programs that an entrepreneur requires for staff when their business only pays staff minimum wage?

Hey, where do I sign up for these financial support programs so I can get some of this free government money?

[Dion]

Early Returns From Seattle's Minimum-Wage Experiment

So what did they find? People are getting paid a higher wage -- and yet, earnings didn’t rise much, because people are also working less. People who made less than $11 an hour before the law took effect saw, on average, a modest bump in their paycheck (about $72 every three months). The median number of hours worked fell by about four hours per quarter.

If you can make slightly more money by working slightly fewer hours, who wouldn’t take that deal? The trouble is that this is the average effect. If the cutbacks in hours worked are "lumpy" -- if some people saw big reductions, while others saw little or none -- then the people whose hours were reduced a lot could well be worse off, while the people who got the wage hikes and the same number of hours might be substantially better off. This is particularly true if one of those “lumps” consists of people who become unemployed entirely.

Which it seems to. According to the study, the share of those low-wage workers who were still employed after the law took effect fell by 1.2 percent. That’s not Great Depression-level unemployment by any means. And some of it could consist of people who would, say, rather be home with their kids, and who no longer need to work because their partner just got a substantial raise thanks to Seattle’s higher minimum wage. However: 1.2 percent is not nothing. And given that it’s not really all that easy to support a family on $11 an hour in Seattle, I’m pretty skeptical that this represents a lot of voluntary unemployment. There’s also evidence that about 3 percent of previous workers had to look for work outside the city of Seattle.

This matters because unemployment matters. Long-term unemployment tends to make people permanently unhappy even when their basic material needs are taken care of. So substantial and permanent declines in the share of workers who are employed is a huge cost, and I’d want to see some pretty big benefits to justify it.

Is the benefit big enough? The best guess is that workers who remained employed saw a quarterly increase in earnings of about $184. If you live in a low-income household, $736 a year is a substantial sum. On the other hand, if you live in a low-income household, “no wages at all” is catastrophic.

Of course, these effects are likely to increase as the higher wages phase in. The earnings increases will grow, but so will the number of people who see their hours reduced or who can’t find work at all, or who have to take on a new and less attractive commute because they can no longer find a job in Seattle. We will have to wait to see whether the costs and benefits rise together, or one eclipses the other.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...age-experiment

[Locke]

That article is bunk.

Everyone knows that just paying people more is the answer and there should be no question about it.

"They cant make it work."

- "Should we perhaps just consider giving them more money?"

"Is it our money?"

- "HELL NO!!! Its filthy corporate money!!"

"Well then yeah. Who cares?"

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by Delgar

How about you let us know which financial support programs you complain about so someone could actually answer?

Your question is asinine the way it is posed, its not possible to answer. I don't even understand how you link it to minimum wage.

Simplest example is subsidized housing. Federal, Provincial and municipal taxes required to provide housing for "working poor" when employers don't pay enough for workers to live in the community.

[Resolute 14]

Once again, why is there a presumption that every task is worthy of a "living wage"?

[Fuzz]

I like some of the European systems:
http://www.europeanceo.com/finance/t...age-in-europe/
where their is a scale based on age or skill. Does a 15 year old flipping burgers living at home require a "living wage"?