How Minimum Wage Laws Helped Ruin The Moviegoing Experience
by Leo GrinThere’s an Ed McBain police procedural novel (Poison, I think it was), where the cops take a statement from a man accused of gunning someone down in a movie theater. The suspect explains how the deceased kept talking and talking behind him during the picture, just wouldn’t shut up, and so in a moment of blind rage the suspect turned around and emptied his pistol into the offending loudmouth. Memorably, one of the cops thinks it over, and wonders whether the shooter could beat the wrap with a plea of justifiable homicide.
That darkly humorous vignette carries within it the kernel of a hard truth. It points out the way our culture has coarsened over the years. One of the marvels of classic movies is that they remind us of a glorious time in America when service — true, wonderful, humane service — hadn’t yet been brutally legislated out of existence by do-gooder liberals. Real, live, friendly, English-speaking humans used to answer your phone calls whenever you called a business. They used to bag your groceries and carry them to your car. They would check your oil and pump your gas at the station, or carry your luggage through airports or up to your room at hotels. Old movies featuring department stores show armies of employees manning every department.
And yes, at movie theaters (movie palaces, they were called, and looked the part) they would usher you to your seat with a flashlight and a smile. If someone starting talking during the picture, the usher would shut them up. If the film was out of focus, an usher would alert the projectionist.
You were happy to have the service and the smile, they were happy to have the tip and the job. Everyone was happy. Life was good.
Then the liberals descended like vampires (the Stoker kind, not the Meyer kind) and passed all manner of laws and regulations about who these businesses could employ and at what price. Almost overnight, all of these service jobs vanished.
Why? Economist Peter Schiff explains it well in a trenchant article he wrote last year titled “Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity”:
When confronted with a clogged drain, most of us will call several plumbers and hire the one who quotes us the lowest price. If all the quotes are too high, most of us will grab some Drano and a wrench, and have at it. Labor markets work the same way. Before bringing on another worker, an employer must be convinced that the added productivity will exceed the added cost (this includes not just wages, but all payroll taxes and other benefits.) So if an unskilled worker is capable of delivering only $6 per hour of increased productivity, such an individual is legally unemployable with a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
These days we all go through life with our humanity and civilization diminished because of these laws. Look around, and you’ll see old people struggling to pump their gas or carry their luggage. You’ll see Mom and Dad ready to pop a blood vessel as they frantically navigate through computerized telephone menus looking for a real live human being who can help them. Simultaneously, you’ll see an ever-growing army of unskilled people — mostly teenagers looking to break into the job market — denied the opportunity to work because liberals have made it functionally illegal to employ them.
Such problems are a direct and predictable consequence of thoughtless wage and employer regulations, and they’ve wreaked quiet devastation on our society and standard of living, especially among the very people they were originally designed to help.
Think of some of the ways in which movie theaters have tried to improve their service in past years: Reserved Seating, Over-21 only theaters, and even food and beverage service delivered right to your seat. All fine ideas. But in my experience, the theaters never manage to do any of these things right. Pay a few extra bucks for a reserved seat, and more often than not you’ll find some surly Morlock already sitting there, with no one around to help you get what you paid for. Buy a ticket for an “over 21 only” showing at a theater, and odds are that enough obnoxious teens will have snuck in to ruin the peace and quiet you paid a premium for. And just try to find someone to place a seat-side food order with on a busy Friday night.
All of this ineptitude could be ameliorated if theaters were once again able to marshal this:
A phalanx of trained ushers — nay, bouncers, with heavy police flashlights and tasers at the ready! All lined up in parade formation, and poised to bring the lost service-sector glories of Western Civ back from the dead! Make their day, reserve-seat stealing punks.
Like any other business, movie theaters would love to employ more people and, in so doing, vastly improve their services. Simultaneously, lots of unemployed teens and retired seniors would be happy to make a bit of spending money working for them. The only thing stopping this marriage of supply and demand are people like this:
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114 Comments
Word! My fifteen year old son needs a part time job. He will be competeing with out of work fathers who really need the job more.
So true. My father had his own veterinary practice. Years ago he liked to hire teens who were interested in veterinary medicine to help clean the animal cages, help at the front desk, etc. As the minimum wage increased it became less and less worth his money to hire them. It really is astounding that feel-good liberals can't understand this. At the least Congress should allow a reduced minimum wage for teens.
One thing I've always known is that underneath their oh-so-compassionate facade, liberals are furious, angry human beings much more willing than conservatives to play dirty and, as you mentioned, coarsen society. The minimum wage law is just another, more subtle approach they've found that accomplishes the same thing. It lets them diminish good service, hurt employment rates, while at the same time allowing them to play the beatific benefactors to the downtrodden.
Sir, an excellent article that is very much on point. But, sadly, any Regressive/Socialist that reads it will automatically label you an extremist. To wit: You said that service was performed by "English-speaking" workers. Right there you have La Raza, the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, and The Democratic (Socialist ?) party at you. To demand that the workers are able to communicate to you is, is, darn, just down right racist!!!! And then you have the Gall, the absolute Gall, to expect them to work, just because they are paid by a evil Capitalist. HAVE YOU NO SHAME!!!! These people should have the right to sit and watch the movie, instead of working> >>>>> LOL… O.K> that was a thought excercise….. I tried to put myself into the Regressive/Socialist mind. ;0) LMAO
Pure B.S. Try telling member of a Minority group that they will have to be quiet or leave. Are you really ready for the lawsuit? Try telling a Hispanic in San Antonio that and you will have LULAC all over you. Actually Dallas is even more in the hip pocket of LULAC. I quit going to a theater near my house in Dallas because the patrons were very militant hispanic. They would talk during the movie, use their cell phones and complaining got you nowhere. I think they finally went out of business. The dollar theaters here in San Antonio closed because the gangs would show up to show everyone how many members they had. You going to tell them to be quiet? One of the theaters I went to in south Dallas had more cops working security than theater personnel.
I have heard a lot of arguments about minimum wage but they are normally couched in an argument like yours, where the problem you are discussing has nothing to do with minimum wage.
I completely agree with this article. As a 23 year old male manager at a movie theater that does well over 1 million patrons a year, I know first hand the challenges that arise in attempting to give the best theater experience for customers. I also do the hiring myself, and just this week went through 70+ applications and picked out a lucky 5 for employment.
I made a speech on this (minimum wage) in college leaning heavily on material from the good Dr. Walter Williams. Do you think anyone got it? Actually my teacher quietly told me later that she completely agreed with me. That was encouraging but the fact that she was scared to say it out loud wasn't.
I hereby nominate you for the 2010 NYC AMP (Anti Marxist Propaganda) award which has never, in the history of the world, been awarded to any citizen of Progressive-Ville (East Coast chapter).
It's not just the minimum wage, Leo, though good luck to all of us trying to kill that (I'm not that old, but the minwage was $1.65! when I was just out of HS).
The other nail in this two-nail coffin is the outrageous amount of taxes taken out as the minwage grows. What's a liveable wage of $10 when the government takes half?
I was watching the news last night and said to my wife, "If Americans were truly thinking, they wouldn't just vote the Democrats out of office, they'd throw them all in jail, every single abortion-loving one of them."
While I think there are problems with minimum wage laws, I don't think that repealing the minimum wage law would encourage movie theaters to hire competent ushers. Why? When my father worked in a theater as a child during The Great Depression, he worked there so he could actually see movies, because he wouldn't have been able to afford them otherwise. Similarly, he did deliveries for a store because the owner allowed him to use the bicycle when he wasn't worker. He wouldn't have had a bicycle otherwise.
Kids today are given everything and don't need to work, and it's why they don't often don't take the jobs that their parents make them take seriously, because they don't fear getting fired or their life becoming unbearably bad if they lose their job. Their parents or the government will catch them or they'll subsidize their lives with debt.
This was illustrated for me vividly, in the late 1980s, when as a summer job in college I did newspaper delivery for routes without paperboy. One day, I was asked to take the route of a paperboy whose family was going on vacation. When I talked to him, he apologized and told me that he asked all of his friends to cover for him and none of them wanted to do it. They didn't need the money and had no interest in doing the work.
During The Great Depression and before, unmarried children worked to support their families starting at ages unimaginable today (an uncle of mine did flower deliveries at 9) and turned most, if not all, of their pay over to their parents to support the whole family. Today, parents pay for their children to go through years of college and then let them live at home, often asking nothing in return. That has far more to do with the changes in attitudes and service that you see than the minimum wage laws do.
Very true. Also, movie jobs come with a nice perk – free movies. Retail jobs usually offer a merchandise discount. Young people could be picking up some good work experience if minimum wage and other employer requirements did not stand in the way.
An old movie note – I recently saw Advise and Consent (1962?). One scene showed the Vice President and a Senator on a plane – travelling on a regular commercial flight!
My how times have changed.
Minimum wage laws weren't invented to "help the working poor", they were just sold that way. The real reason was to raise the price of all labor so expensive union labor wouldn't be so exorbitantly out of line with the market. Ask yourself: "Why are unions such huge supporters of minimum wage laws when NONE, ZERO, ZIP, NADA, of any of their members earn that little?" Empathy for the little guy my a$$……..
Here's the truth about the minimum wage. Prior to the passing of the minimum wage increase I made $8.25 an hour for a 40 hour week. I had some buying power and prices were lower so I was able to save more. Do you think my hourly wage was increased to compensate for the increase in a minimum wage? If you believe that I have some ocean front property in North Dakota to sell you.
I lost my buying power. And since prices were increased to compensate I suffered even more. I fail to understand why these political types think this is a good thing. In my experience it only makes more poor people. But unlike most, I would never vote for someone simply because they are a R or a D. If they vote to increase the minimum wage, they will never get my vote. These increases will kill this country, and anyone who thinks otherwise is only kidding themselves.
I'm confused–presumably he needed to pay someone to do the work? Why not still use the teens? If you have to hire someone, why not still use a kid who needed the experience instead of a drone?
When **did** ushers disappear?About the time of double features, I guess. I am old enough to remember that era although the best over-the-top scene in this genre has to be in Back To The Future, where Marty lands back in 1955 Hill Valley and sees a Flying A station (remember THOSE? )- with a 55 Chevy pulling in and 4 guys running out to fill the car, clean the windshield, check the tires, check the radiator.
One thing not mentioned Leo is our Draconian workman's comp prices – because of law suits I guess – prohibiting – well obviously not prohibiting but discouraging – hiring employees in any endeavor that involves physical work. I have a good friend since childhood – in the 70s he decided to get a trade that would always be in demand – I decided to become a computer programmer while he became a plumber.
My friend is still working – making 6 figures – in his own company – will not hire anyone because of the expense of workman's comp and is doing quite well…
If people want a job that involves bringing food and drink to people and ushering them to their seats, it's called being a waiter. And you can make a heck of a lot more than a movie theater worker. I worked in a theater in the 80's as a teen. (in a mall, decent part of town) People were revolting. They left dirty diapers, cups of chewing tobacco spit and everyone else seemed to eat two popcorn kernels, take a sip of soda and then dump the rest on the floor. Free movies weren't worth mopping up the vomit, not to mention the horrible uniform. (to this day, I won't leave as much as a gum wrapper behind) As soon as I could, I got a job in a bookstore, and as soon as I was old enough, waited tables. Let's be frank, since we're using movie theaters as an example, they kind of suck to work at. I don't mind paying a higher ticket for reserved seating, etc. (Sorry for your bad experiences, Leo, but overall the system works in the L.A. theaters that offer it) As for the loss of service overall–I think businesses would rather hire as few people as possible regardless of their wages. It's cheaper to have no bell hops at all than to even pay one or two minimum wage or below, isn't it? But level of service really depends on where you are, doesn't it? On a recent road trip I stayed in a cool funky little hotel in Arizona with no bell staff, but also stayed at the Aria in Las Vegas which had phalanxes of staff clamoring to carry my bags, etc. (But I just tend to roll my bag myself because I'm cheap.)
The minimum wage law is part of the Utopian sales pitch of the left. It is now merely used to set a baseline from which union wages can be set. They could care less if the increase results in unemployment. It's sad that more Republicans dont discuss the 45% increase in minimum wage that the Pelosi/Reed Congress implemented. There is a direct correlation between the three bumps and the pursuant unemployment rate that is undeniable.
Aside: I've always heard that McBain felt that "Hill St. Blues" ripped off the "87th Precinct." Does anyone know if he sued and/or if Bochco ever acknowledged as much? (Thanks)
Curious what your employee turnover is over the course of a year? Do you think that's due directly to the wages you pay, or the nature of people seeing it as a temporary job to begin with? (I will assume minimum wage) If you could pay less, do you think you'd get the same quality of employee?
If you can tell us how cleaning cages and answering telephones is WORTH $7.25/hour in terms of productivity, I'll agree with you. Unfortunately, the value of that sort of work is less than what it costs so one just has to do it oneself and work a bit longer each day. Salaries have to be based on how much value they add to a business–not on how much the employee "needs" to pay his car payment, rent, utilities and food costs. Why liberals NEVER seem able to grasp this simple fact is puzzling–at least until one recalls WHO it is that are teaching our kids these days.
Two of my friends, both with degrees, are currently working at MACYS. What kind of weird world do we live in that a man with a degree in physics is selling shoes at MACYS and teens are out of work completely?
The Expert Knows http://theexpertsblog.blogspot.com
The money is not the issue. The issue is that our society has become much coarser, demanding and in some cases militant. In many instances, the interaction between people comes down to who believes he or she has the greater right to a service, money or benefit. Because its come down to rights, there's no need for payback or even a thank you because they are exercising their rights that has been guaranteed to them.
You know, I USED to go to the movies. But now the ticket prices are so high, and the quality of the experience is so low, that I just wait until the movies come out on DVD. Unless I can go to a matinee during the week when the kids are in school. What I really hate (other than the actual movies) is sitting in a theatre with people who seem to think they're at home in their living room. They talk out loud to each other, they talk on their cellphones, they text message on their cellphones, they chew loudly… just boorish behavior. I was at a live stage show a couple of weeks ago, sitting in the FRONT row, and the people next to me NEVER SHUT UP for the entire three hours (including intermission). I glared at them, shushed them, stood up and berated them during intermission, and as soon as the play started again, they started talking again. It's like the lights went down and they thought they were invisible. They were also talking to the people BEHIND them during the show. And these were grownups! I can't imagine what it was like for the actors who were trying to perform with these dolts sitting 10 feet away yakking the entire time.
Good luck with your career in theatre management, Funny!
This is a very good point. My neighbors complain about not being able to find babysitters, because teenagers are given so much money (and stuff) by their parents, they don't want to babysit to earn money. When I was a teenager (from age 11 to 20) I babysat three or more nights a week to get spending money. When I was 15 I got my first non-babysitting job, and after that I worked part-time all through high school and college, and still babysat whenever I could. When I got home from my babysitting (and other jobs) at least half of my earnings went into the savings account for college expenses.
My nephews, on the other hand, were handed EVERYTHING by their parents, NEVER took a part-time job, and when they graduated from college (all expenses paid, of course) moved back home with mommy & daddy, no rent, and no expectation that they'll actually find a job in the field for which they trained in college. So they play all day and "think about" what they want to be when they grow up.
Actually, the minimum wage is such a hot button for Dems because union wages are TIED to the minimum wage. Every time the minimum wage is raised, ALL union wages go up proportionately. It has nothing to do with a "living wage." Especially because anyone who is actually trying to support the mythical "family of four" on the minimum wage should not be allowed to have children!
siredecoucy says:
"Try telling member of a Minority group that they will have to be quiet or leave. Are you really ready for the lawsuit? . . . the problem you are discussing has nothing to do with minimum wage."
The coarsening (and the infantilization) of our society is a problem with many root causes, with minimum wage laws being just one of them. Yes, frivolous and predatory lawsuits are another huge problem, but a large part of why they became so prevalent is that service has become so poor, tempers have flared all around, and no one is around in a position of authority to diffuse matters. Gangs have grown so much because of the sorry state of our education, immigration, and assimilation apparatus.
The one constant in all these problems is liberalism. Everything they touch turns to crap, everything they try to improve gets worse. Their laws and fees and taxes and regulations are everywhere driving people nuts and making lives miserable. In a thousand different ways they curtail the productivity and happiness of people minding their own business and making their own way in life.
QA_NJ says:
"While I think there are problems with minimum wage laws, I don't think that repealing the minimum wage law would encourage movie theaters to hire competent ushers. . . That has far more to do with the changes in attitudes and service that you see than the minimum wage laws do."
Eliminating minimum wage would certainly allow theaters to hire more of them, and that by itself would have a good effect on service. There are kids who don't want jobs because mommy and daddy pamper them, but far more kids would love to take a job as a movie usher at $5 an hour that currently they are denied at $8 an hour. Senior citizens, too. ( think of how much productivity we've lost because seniors who used to work as doormen or ushers or telephone operators now sit on their asses all day in retirement because they aren't allowed to work above a certain number of hours and still collect their social security.)
Social security is just like the parents in your tale who give their kids enough money to make them unmotivated to work. I go so far as to think that principled conservatives should make it a loud point of never accepting social security, they should live their life and plan for their retirement as if it doesn't exist, and when the time comes they should reject receiving any payments, considering it as demeaning as living off of unemployment as a welfare queen.
God, liberals have done so much to screw up our society and our lives. Republicans should run on platforms of repealing laws, not enacting them.
Another_thought says:
"movie jobs come with a nice perk – free movies. Retail jobs usually offer a merchandise discount. Young people could be picking up some good work experience if minimum wage and other employer requirements did not stand in the way."
Exactly. See my Big Hollywood pieces on classic director King Vidor, who gained much of his early passion for and knowledge of movies by working in a theater as a child, and film composer John Barry, who similarly became fascinated with movie music while working at his father's theater chain in the UK.
As Peter Schiff mentions in the article I linked to above, young boys who started out as pump jockeys would learn on that job how to be a mechanic. Taking another example from a comment here, someone hired to clean out animal cages might eventually work their way into becoming a Vet. All of these invaluable educations have been brutally legislated out of existence by the libs, who cloak themselves in a virtuous caring for the poor even as they secretly dismantle the apparatus the poor needs to climb up the social and economic ladders.
mrm_in_wnc says:
"Minimum wage laws weren't invented to "help the working poor", they were just sold that way. The real reason was to raise the price of all labor so expensive union labor wouldn't be so exorbitantly out of line with the market."
That's an interesting point. As a corollary, whenever liberals enact such laws, they come chock full of ways for unscrupulous people to exploit the imbalances and unintended consequences that are created. They force millions of ordinary Americans to feel like criminals as they are forced to quietly skirt around the law and create mini-black markets for goods and labor just to live a decent life.
My daughter has been looking for work where she is going to school… a daunting task in this economy for anyone who is a student. The odds are already stacked against you. Add this… the minimum wage isn't $7.25, it's $10. Yes, $10.00 an hour to work at McDonalds, to bus tables, to cashier at Wal-Mart. At $10 an hour not only will an adult take the job, they will commute from out of town to take the job.
Also… rent is higher there.
What a shock.
Too damn high?
As a conservative libertarian, I agree that minimum wage laws do more harm than good. But Leo's economic arguments are simplistic and full of holes.
Nation wide minimum wage laws were first enacted during the 1930's. We enjoyed decades of high service levels after the minimum wage came into effect.
There are two reasons service levels have faltered dramatically: First, businesses large and small are managed differently, and today they place more emphasis on THE NUMBERS: fanatically squeezing every last possible drop of revenue and profit so that THE NUMBERS are as high as they can possibly be.
Consumers have totally cooperated, and that's the other reason. Thanks to the skyrocketing real costs of housing, insurance, medical care and education, more people are FAR more price conscious than they were years ago, allowing PRICE and only PRICE to dictate which airline to take, which store to shop at, and so on.
If consumers wanted "premium" stores and movie "palaces," and were willing to PAY for them, the market would oblige. But what most people want today is CHEAP.
And on the flip side: How Buttered Popcorn Aided Leo Grin's Moviegoing Experience
maatkare says:
"If people want a job that involves bringing food and drink to people and ushering them to their seats, it's called being a waiter. And you can make a heck of a lot more than a movie theater worker."
Waiters are more productive than movie theater workers, that's why they make more. And yes, if movie theaters wanted to do the whole food-to-seat thing right they would have little extendable fold-out trays built on the seats, and they would have enough waiters and ushers to make it feel like a sit-down meal. In such a setup, the waiter would get tips, and they would certainly make more money. The way it is now, the service is so lame that you feel like a fool for not getting your own food yourself on your way into the theater.
I worked in a theater in the 80's as a teen. (in a mall, decent part of town) People were revolting. They left dirty diapers, cups of chewing tobacco spit and everyone else seemed to eat two popcorn kernels, take a sip of soda and then dump the rest on the floor. Free movies weren't worth mopping up the vomit, not to mention the horrible uniform. (to this day, I won't leave as much as a gum wrapper behind)
A very interesting series of statements. I would argue that people wouldn't be such pigs if they had ushers sitting around watching them and enforcing basic decorum, and if there were other long lost minimum rules of decency in place in our society (like dress codes). Also, if many more usher jobs were available, it would of course mean that many more kids would grow up to be just like you — a person who won't leave a gum-wrapper behind (I don't leave anything behind either, ever — a manner of behaving borne from early work as a busboy).
"Let's be frank, since we're using movie theaters as an example, they kind of suck to work at."
They'd suck a lot less if there were more people there to help with the work, and to keep the pigs and boors and gang-bangers in line.
"I don't mind paying a higher ticket for reserved seating, etc."
Neither would I, IF it meant that I would be escorted to my seat like a king, and anyone sitting there would be politely ushered to the seat they paid for. Even in the cases where no one is sitting in my seat, I'm often left to flounder in the dark looking for it. For 99.9% percent of movies, a useless "service" — it's far less trouble to just pick an open seat that looks decent and plop down than to bend over and squint looking for row numbers, then counting across to your seat, all while the two or three ushers are outside the theater laughing and gabbing amongst each other.
"As for the loss of service overall–I think businesses would rather hire as few people as possible regardless of their wages. It's cheaper to have no bell hops at all than to even pay one or two minimum wage or below, isn't it?"
This ignores the matter of competition — yes, it's cheaper to hire none than two, but if the guy down the street hires two and you still have none, how much business are you likely to lose by virtue of your inferior service? Again, look at classic movies: ARMIES of employees populating the world ready to help you out and make your life better. Ordinary middle class people even had servants, cooks and nannies working in their homes. All of it was possible because employers and employees could come to a mutually beneficial agreement on salary and perks without the government getting involved and telling us what we could and couldn't offer or accept.
"(But I just tend to roll my bag myself because I'm cheap.)"
You're cheap because you have to be or want to be. It's your choice, and choice feels really good, doesn't it?
But others — who might be too old to lug their own bags, or who might want a break from doing so due to being exhausted from their day jobs, or who might have some disability preventing them from easily performing the task — are SOL at that funky hotel in Arizona. The proprietor of that hotel might very well realize that his customers are unhappy and tired and angry because they have to serve as their own porter, but just like them he's SOL, too, because he's not allowed to hire some young kid to do the job at a wage mutually acceptable to everyone concerned. If he hires someone at the minimum wage, they aren't productive enough to justify the high wage, and he loses money until he goes bankrupt. His only other choice is to not hire them at all.
And so there's now a kid out in Nowhere, AZ without a job, sitting around home playing video games and wishing he could make a bit of spending money. He is now full of muscles and energy and vim and vigor, yet he's sitting on his keister as a completely unproductive member of society, even while down the street those people are huffing and puffing in the heat with their bags, and the hotel owner is hoping they don't collapse from heat exhaustion in his parking lot and proceed to sue his ass.
Welcome to Liberalville, where minimum wage laws protect the poor and needy!
redlion says:
"The issue is that our society has become much coarser, demanding and in some cases militant. In many instances, the interaction between people comes down to who believes he or she has the greater right to a service, money or benefit. Because its come down to rights, there's no need for payback or even a thank you because they are exercising their rights that has been guaranteed to them."
Yes, and it's important to remember that it is the laws that have created the behavior and not the other way around. It's as if our society resisted the siren call of drug pushers for many decades, until Roosevelt made it mandatory that everyone had to start getting injections of infantilization-heroin. And now we all wonder why we've become a nation of government junkies.
The idiot Republican establishment is already putting out feelers about how the nation would react if we didn't repeal Obamacare after all, and instead just chhhhaaannngggeeddd it into something more palatable to our side. My prediction is that soon after this election the GOP is going to start acting pretty much how they did from 2000-2008. For John McCain and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the gang that can't shoot straight it will be business as usual.
Glenn Damato says:
"Leo's economic arguments are simplistic and full of holes. Nation wide minimum wage laws were first enacted during the 1930's. We enjoyed decades of high service levels after the minimum wage came into effect."
No, every year during that period we steadily LOST those services at a frightening rate, going a bit further down the ladder every time the minimum wage (and dozens of other regulations) tightened its grip (social security wasn't a big deal at first either, it took decades to grow into the country-killing behemoth it is now). The minimum wage started only with baby steps in the late 1930s (after having been ruled as unconstitutional for decades by sane Supreme Courts) but didn't reach its peak in real, inflation adjusted terms until the late 1960s, And over those three decades the old world of service became a blasted ruin. Compare the world of DINNER AT EIGHT or GRAND HOTEL to MIDNIGHT COWBOY or THE FRENCH CONNECTION. The movies tell the tale we've forgotten, they've preserved the record.
"There are two reasons service levels have faltered dramatically: First, businesses large and small are managed differently, and today they place more emphasis on THE NUMBERS: fanatically squeezing every last possible drop of revenue and profit so that THE NUMBERS are as high as they can possibly be."
Why are they managed so differently? Because the LAWS have forced them to do so. They now compete with the wages of third world countries while having their own wage-controlling hands tied by minimum wage laws here. Something had to give, and a part of that something has been SERVICE TO AMERICANS. On paper, there was no rational way they could continue to provide human interaction and service that would otherwise have bankrupted them.
"Consumers have totally cooperated, and that's the other reason. Thanks to the skyrocketing real costs of housing, insurance, medical care and education, more people are FAR more price conscious than they were years ago, allowing PRICE and only PRICE to dictate which airline to take, which store to shop at, and so on."
They only do so because they have to act so cheap, just as the companies do. All due to the endless laws and regulations and taxes that bleed us dry everywhere we go. The lack of service, the cheapness, the coarseness, the laziness and slothfulness — life in America doesn't have to be this way. It was made this way by the meddling laws of liberals. Repeal the laws, and life would transform into something much more worthy and decent.
And on the flip side: How The Dog Crap On My Shoe Aided In Your Weight Loss Endeavors.
Instead of hiring a teen these jobs were assigned to people who were capable of doing more difficult tasks as well. As the minimum wage increased over the years there was less room in the budget for a teen or a drone.
His sin is not addressing in his article the vast income inequality
of 2007 and 1928, to ignore this data in my opinion is pure insanity,
and therefore he deserves my initial reply.
Leo – you make good points, but I'm not convinced that the cultural changes we've seen were mainly caused by wage laws or even taxes and fees.
Nearly all businesses have been affected by the "worship of the numbers" religion, and part of that is because of the consolidations we've seen with parent companies swallowing independent firms, followed by relentless pressure from the parent firm to steadily increase profits, increase market share, and cut costs every quarter – so the stock price can inch up. Managers who don't play the game don't hit their numbers and are shown the door.
This situation has ruined the book publishing industry. The airlines too – but the frustrating thing is, people complain about no pillows and packed flights, but they will gladly choose their airline based entirely on a seven dollar savings.
I agree that leftist meddling in the economy is a factor, but we should be careful to temper our arguments less they lose credibility and leave gaps for the other side to attack. Milton Friedman was good at making a point but taking care not to overstate.
I witnessed a pepper spray incident during a movie at the cineplex just recently. It had the same storyline only the guy got the full dose of a can of pepper spray in the face because he just would not shut up during Avatar. The spray had blue dye in it so it went right along with the movie. Too bad it wasn't James Cameron, but it still was poetic justice at it's finest. The audience stood up and applauded the little lady that did the spraying. So it goes.
Some of my friends complain about the same thing. When I was 12, I started babysitting for spending money, also. The thing is, I only kept about a fourth of what I earned. The rest went to my mom to help with 'family finances'. I have pretty much worked since then, (excepting the period of time when I stayed home when the kids were very young). We've taught our kids that, as their parents, we would give them everything they needed, and some of the things they wanted. Anything beyond that, they would have to earn for themselves. Comparing that to many of my contemporaries' children, I much prefer my way. I can't tell you how many times friends have said, "I don't know what it is with my kids. I've given them so much, and they just don't seem to appreciate it." *Facepalm*
I agree!!! Lower minimum wage so you can redistribute that money too!!! Why so Socialist?
Gotcha. I wasn't trying to snark, I was truly curious. But as sad as it is for the teen (and your dad was wonderful to give them such a chance), ultimately isn't it better for a business to have a more versatile employee? There's no constitutional right to a starter job.
Call me crazy, but I'd call $h*t shoveling and cage cleaning pretty valuable to my business. If I had to do something that gross for a living, I'd need at least $7.25 an hour to do it.
Dare I remind you that visions of stores teeming with employees in classic movies were just that–visions? You are nostalgic for an illusion created by Old Hollywood, my friend.
Re: my travel–yeah, I'd rather save tip money for booze, especially since I travel light. It's like valet parking–I always resent paying a guy $10 to park my car 10 feet from where I dropped it off. And I assure you, the AZ hotel clientele (much of it older) seem to find the charm of the place (La Posada in Winslow; it's really cool and has an excellent restaurant, and the rooms are named for old-time movie stars) worth the indignity of self-bag handling. (Seriously–are there still suitcases _without_ wheels anymore?) And that video game playing teen probably would rather work in a mall at Game Stop than heft bags all day in the first place. But umbrage at government control aside, I've always thought that if it were abolished and wages for certain jobs dropped you'd end up with an even more unskilled, less motivated worker. I think there will always be an insurmountable gulf between what an employer/employee thinks a living wage is.
<<Ordinary middle class people even had servants, cooks and nannies working in their homes. All of it was possible because employers and employees could come to a mutually beneficial agreement on salary and perks without the government getting involved and telling us what we could and couldn't offer or accept.>> But wasn't that the whole point for people to work hard and provide their kids with a better life where they wouldn't have to seek out that kind of work? I think that particular issue says more about how American society has evolved overall. Is it a good or bad thing that fewer Americans want to be household servants?
Plainly, we should just bring back slavery.
Why pay ANY wages when we can simply compel service? Then we'd have fewer people griping about their "rights" because they wouldn't have any, AND we could cheaply compel human beings to do things that no one would otherwise do without being paid something remotely resembling a living wage.
Plainly, we should just bring back slavery.
Why pay ANY wages when we can simply compel service? Then we'd have fewer people griping about their "rights" because they wouldn't have any, AND we could cheaply compel human beings to do things that no one would otherwise do without being paid something remotely resembling a living wage.
Same thing happened to me. Only it happened when I opened this post. The faint smell of popcorn.
What difference does it make anymore…all of the teens and Young Adults get inside in the dark and immediately open up their cell phones and start texting whoever they know, or reading email on the internet…the theatre is lit up light high noon, and some of them are texting someone in the NEXT ROW. Theatres are crashed by the pathetic society we now have, not just the wage laws.
Read it again. He said that his father "liked to hire" teens with an interest in veterinary medicine. In other words you give a kid a bit of money and access to a vet and a veterinary practice–kind of like an internship or apprenticeship, but as the minimum wage increased, these kids were the first to go.
It's not about a starter job, or even having a part time employee, it's about giving a kid who thinks s/he might want to be a vet a look at how things really are. Lots of businesses used to be able to do things like that, they can't now.
At least that's how I read it, and the vet in my town used to do the same thing. Hope this helps.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, I fear the Repubs this election cycle as much as I do the Dems.
"compelling" people to do things is what socialism is all about. The right is all about supply and demand- you know, letting people make their own choices.
can't have any of that in your centrally planned utopia.
and correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Democratic plantation slave owners against those nasty northern Republican big business owners?
I'm very much in support of this.
Why, just the other day the chimney was blocked up, and as I leafed through my yellow book I ruminated on how much easier and more cost-effective it would be were I able to simply pay a shilling to one of the local children to crawl in and dislodge it without worrying about the whole "going to prison" thing.
I also have it on good authority that, some time ago, one was actually able to "employ" workers without having to pay them at all! Now that, my friends, is a deal! Sadly, it seems the whole practice was done away with by – you guessed it – do-gooder activist judges. Scallywags, all of `em…
I'm young, and even I don't go to theaters anymore because of that. Same thing happens at restaurants as well, try to have lunch or dinner with friends and at the next table cellphones are going off every other minute. What happened to manners.
The minimum wage has done more to contribute to the 18-32 unemployment rate, than anything. I also have a problem with child labor laws, why not allow a 12 year old to have a job. Its not like we would be using kids as chimney sweeps or crash test dummies. It would probably allow the kids to take responsibility a lot sooner, and maybe give them a leg up on paying for their college education. Get the kids away form the video games and cellphone, put them to work.
Flatly not true. I was one of those kids. In the late 70s and early 80s in NJ. We were thrilled to work with the animals for just a pittance. It wasn't all gross work, it was fascinating, and educational, and meaningful. And the money didn't matter so much — we were just teens and it was just spending money.
Before the Soviet Union collapsed cab drivers were making more than University Professors because they controlled thier own work and wages while most of the country was locked into the Politburo's pay scale.
Central Planning — Bad
Capitalism — Good
Chorasho
Fair enough! I'm gad you were enriched. But you were fortunate that the money didn't matter much. For most people working minimum wage, I think it matters a very great deal. (and it sure meant a lot when I was a teen–I very much needed every cent for upcoming college expenses) But if most teen jobs were just pittances for spending money, then it's no great loss that these jobs have gone to adults who need them for subsistence then, is it?
I'd rather the grownup who needs the job to pay rent get it than a kid who presumably gets room and board at home, but it's a messed up situation, no doubt. Out of curiosity, does the Macy's job pay close enough to cover their expenses? I've been through rough patches and am not extravagant, but I'm terrified that there's no way I could make ends meet as an adult on minimum wage.
You stinkin' Commie! Wages should only be based on what an employer wants to pay! How a worker actually gets enough money to eat isn't the employer's problem or responsibility! That's the great crime liberalism has committed for all these years! Oh, how I long for the days of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory!
Am I to believe that getting rid of the minimum wage would get companies to hire Americans over foreigners?
My gut feeling is that they'd still hire the foreigners because they'd still be willing to work for less and under worse conditions than Americans, and companies would still use illegal labor.
That sounds a whole lot cuter than it really is.
Slavery and child labor and workplace safety are separate issues from the freedom of individuals to enter into an agreement freely to negotiate the value of their labor.
I have four teenagers in the house who can't find work. Perhaps your "activist" judges could solve that problem for me.
12 is actually an opportunity window with kids. At that age they are highly motivated to be "grown up", to get a part time job and start to be a little bit more independent.
By 16 a lot of kids have adjusted to their new status of enforced and extended childhood and are more interested in hanging out with friends.
Then remind me NEVER to hire you. I want an employee who'll do what it takes to add VALUE to my business–not one who finds ANY job I might assign him to be too distasteful to do it for what I can pay and stay profitable. I've frequently told my employers that I'll do whatever they need for me to do as long as they pay me every two weeks…including menial jobs that lots of others in my job description would simply refuse to do as being "beneath my dignity."
Businesses are NOT in business to provide people with jobs. They're in business to make a profit…period.
"Slavery and child labor and workplace safety are separate issues from the freedom of individuals to enter into an agreement freely to negotiate the value of their labor."
They really aren't, though.
If you make desperation profitable, you will only get MORE desperation. Americans, historically, are not very good at "moderating" – we're an either-or culture, for better or worse. So, take your pick: You either want a world with overpowered Unions, minimum wages, etc. OR you want slavery-in-all-but-name employee-subjugation. There is no "middle path" – this is America, we don't "do" middle paths.
Taking away the minimum wage law will NOT lead businesses to say "oh, good! Now that I can drop wages from 8 to 5 dollars, I can afford to hire a few more employees, thus spreading the workload and improving service to my customers!" – thats a fantasy (or, perhaps, Canada.) The reality: "Oh, good! Now that I can drop wages from 8 dollars to $1.50, I can have the exact same number of employees – now culled from the ranks of the truly-desperate who can actually work for that price – and pocket the $6.50 extra for myself! And if the one or two customers out of a thousand who actually CARE about good service complain, they won't for long – how can anyone AFFORD to shop based on service… have you seen how little people get PAID these days!?"
I doubt it. They'd still use foreigners/illegals who'd work even cheaper than us.
The Minimum Wage is Too Damn High!
The Lincoln Cinemas in Bellevue, Washington has such a ready team of snappy uniformed ushers and usherettes, all with flashlights who deliver ole style customer service. Before the movie begins, one of them walks to the front of the screen and welcomes everyone, announces NO talking, cell phones or underaged kids…and in a NICE way lets you know if you violate any of these rules and disturb other guests, you will be escorted from the theater WITHOUT a ticket refund…It's WONDERFUL…you can actually ENJOY a film in the theater experience without some selfish, clueless jerk spoiling it. Outside in the lobby, there is also a large front desk, always staffed, with big neon signage above, "Customer Service Center." Oh, all the theaters are stadium style seating, THX surround sound, quilted velvet seats and thoroughly cleaned between each showing. If ALL movie theaters were run this way, HOLLYWOOD would be making lots more $$$$.
maatkare says:
"I'd call $h*t shoveling and cage cleaning pretty valuable to my business. If I had to do something that gross for a living, I'd need at least $7.25 an hour to do it."
It's not a matter of how valuable the task is to the business, but how skilled one has to be in order to perform it. Picking fruit in the fields is ultimately very valuable to farmers, but as anyone with four limbs and half a brain can do it, it doesn't pay much. Same with cleaning crap from cages.
And as Cloudbuster below says, kids interested in animals (or, say, ladies working in zoos) are more than happy to clean the cages of the animals they care for, just as a mother puts up with the equally gross job of changing her kid's diaper.
biancaneve says:
"Instead of hiring a teen these jobs were assigned to people who were capable of doing more difficult tasks as well. As the minimum wage increased over the years there was less room in the budget for a teen or a drone."
That's exactly right, and in a free market there is a point where a businessman can say, "You know, for this many dollars an hour, it would be worth it for me to hire some kid to clean the cages, and let my more skilled workers spend all of their time doing their regular job."
With that realization, presto — a kid now has a job, along with the concomitant spending money and budding work ethic, which combine to form an invaluable life-changing experience. Meanwhile the skilled worker is happy to no longer be cleaning cages, and the businessman is over the moon, having employed not one but two people at a price he can afford, leveraging both of their productive abilities to the hilt.
Of course, as the kid learns more about being a veterinarian, he'll take on more jobs around the office, each requiring more skills and experience. With the assumption of those skills he will either get paid more, or eventually he'll figure out that with his new-found skills he could find a better-paying job elsewhere. Once he does, some new kid will assume his old crap-cleaning duties, perpetuating the cycle of productivity and employment and happiness.
The way it is now, this is often impossible. Hiring some kid to clean cages — paying a government-mandated too-high salary and a host of benefits for precious little skill or productivity — is beyond the means of most businesses. So they make do: they either have some skilled employee take time out of his day providing skilled value to instead do the menial jobs, or they hire someone under the table at a lower salary and thus skirt the law in black-market fashion, or they might even just quietly clean the cages less and make the poor animals that much more miserable. The kid, meanwhile, sits at home without a job, wondering how the hell he is supposed to get one with no skills or experience, and lamenting that he has neither the money nor the self-respect that comes with being gainfully employed.
Minimum wage goes up, prices go up…so minimum wage must go up again, which means prices go up again.
What gets forgotten is that raising the minimum wage increases costs on the business, which gets passed along in the form of higher prices…then the whole circle starts all over again.
I think they believe that the businesses will simply eat the costs of the higher wages. If that happens often enough, the owners will realize it costs too much and BOOM – they close. Then you have unemployed people, instead of minimum-wage-paid people.
maatkare says:
"Curious what your employee turnover is over the course of a year? Do you think that's due directly to the wages you pay, or the nature of people seeing it as a temporary job to begin with? (I will assume minimum wage) If you could pay less, do you think you'd get the same quality of employee?"
The guy got SEVENTY applications for five open jobs. If he offered, say, $5 an hour to ten people instead of $8 to five, do you think that he could find ten people in that group of seventy willing to take it? Of course he would.
And yes, for most it would be a temporary job, decidedly entry-level, a way for an unskilled and inexperienced person to make some Saturday-night spending money while they learn invaluable skills like customer service, teamwork, meeting schedules and deadlines, and performing tasks they don't particularly like in order to bring home the bacon. Some kids will quickly move on to other jobs, some will be really good at their job and really like it and become managers, some may even decide to open their own theater down the road. Some may stay for years as slackers who make enough for their own purposes and don't want the hassle of something more demanding. Who knows?
The point is that each has the freedom to decide, and to make some money if they want instead of getting locked out of the job market by people claiming to care about their well-being.
DGinGA says:
"You know, I USED to go to the movies. But now the ticket prices are so high, and the quality of the experience is so low, that I just wait until the movies come out on DVD."
Yep, millions of movie-loving Americans of all political stripes feel the same way.
"Manners" died sometime around the "Summer of Love" in 68 when everyone learned they needed to be "free" to do "their own thing," man.
Groovy…NOT!
nolotrippen says:
"The other nail in this two-nail coffin is the outrageous amount of taxes taken out as the minwage grows. What's a liveable wage of $10 when the government takes half?"
True — liberalism is the root problem, but it's a hydra with many heads that need killing, with minimum wage only one of them (or, in your analogy, a coffin with many nails).
One thing to keep in mind is that every job isn't one that can support a "livable wage" — plenty of jobs can and should be offered for lower-than-livable wages, all depending on how skilled a worker is needed and how many such workers are available. Many people want part-time work or a second job, and those gigs were perfect for that back when they existed.
Amen.
I would argue that the practice of paying kids under the minimum wage does still exist but to a smaller extent than it used to via paying under the table
My first job at the age of 12 was working in a small mechanics garage, doing cleanup, dumping garbage, putting away tools, collecting and washing rags and being a gofer. I'd usually work six hours a day for about 2.50 an hour. To me it was a great experience where I worked with adults and got to see first hand the trials and tribulations of running a business.
If he could pay $5 an hour I doubt he'd hire five more workers. The corporation that owns the theater would keep the staff at 5, and save the money. Presumably the theater makes money as it's currently run. So why would reducing the wage induce them to hire more workers?
By the way..why do you define yourself as a "male" manager? Just curious.
Is it impossible to think a kid might say, volunteer somewhere while still looking for work? Volunteering or being an unpaid intern also requires responsibility, gives experience, and provides life lessons, as well as exposing a kid to people who haven't been so fortunate. Why is the only alternative to making money complete inactivity? I can't imagine there's a city or town anywhere in the USA that doesn't need help at the senior center, literacy tutors at the women's shelter, or someone to read to kids at the library.
maatkare says:
"
"Dare I remind you that visions of stores teeming with employees in classic movies were just that–visions? You are nostalgic for an illusion created by Old Hollywood, my friend.
Nah, it's an accurate vision. Dig out some old issues of Life magazine and look at the pictures. Read period novels and the stories in the pulps. Look at the advertisements in catalogs and newspapers. Talk to old-timers who lived through that era (one of my best friends, now 90, used to be an usher at the LA Philharmonic in the early 1940s).
Service was a big deal to businesses, because they could all afford to make it a priority, and because their competition could as well, so if they tried to skimp on it, they would get eaten alive by the guy down the road. Same thing with salaries — if they tried paying too little, an employee would quit and go work for the guy down the street. It was only when the minimum wage crept up that business after business was forced to cut jobs regardless of the effect on their customer's happiness.
At $5/hr. perhaps an usher could make a customer's experience pleasant enough that they would come back more often and create, say, $7 worth of extra business. But at $10/hr that $7 worth of extra business isn't even paying that guy's salary, much less padding the bottom line. So they lose their job, the customer loses the service, and the employer loses the extra business.
"It's like valet parking–I always resent paying a guy $10 to park my car 10 feet from where I dropped it off."
But would you resent it if the valet parking was free save for a $1 tip? That's the kind of deal businesses could increasingly afford if they could hire people at a reasonable salary for each job.
"I assure you, the AZ hotel clientele (much of it older) seem to find the charm of the place (La Posada in Winslow; it's really cool and has an excellent restaurant, and the rooms are named for old-time movie stars) worth the indignity of self-bag handling."
It would be far cooler if it was staffed with the same kinds of bellhops, doormen, elevator operators and bathroom attendants that those old-time stars enjoyed in their era.
[to be con't]
[continued from above]
"And that video game playing teen probably would rather work in a mall at Game Stop than heft bags all day in the first place."
But what if all the Game Stop jobs are taken? Or if he could make far more with tips lugging bags than he could at Game Stop? Or if he had no interest in games but wanted to learn the hotel business? (Or just ogle the bathing beauties at the hotel pool?)
"I've always thought that if it were abolished and wages for certain jobs dropped you'd end up with an even more unskilled, less motivated worker."
The current crop of minimum-wage workers could hardly be less skilled or less motivated as-is. Minimum wage work is entry-level. It's not designed to provide a long-term living wage, but to be the first baby-step on one's lifetime employment ladder (or, in the case of retirees, the last rung before they step off it for good). I've worked my share of minimum wage jobs, and have yet to find one that didn't provide a quick path up to higher responsibilities and salaries for anyone with even the slightest bit of work ethic. People who stay stranded at the minimum-wage level are either lazy or don't need any extra money beyond what they are getting.
"I think there will always be an insurmountable gulf between what an employer/employee thinks a living wage is."
Actually the exact opposite is true: left to their own devices, employers and employees work together to surmount every gulf. Of course all employers would like to get away with paying as little as possible for the most work, and all employees with earning as much as possible for the least work. But what's important is how much value is created by the employee for the employer, versus how much value the employer provides the employee in exchange for his labor.
The government setting an arbitrary "living wage" for every type of job, regardless of the value it creates, forces employers to stop employing people who don't provide enough value at that arbitrary salary. The concept of a "living wage" is a meaningless platitude anyway: what one person considers a "living wage" is another's king's ransom, and yet another's embarrassing pittance.
"Wasn't that the whole point for people to work hard and provide their kids with a better life where they wouldn't have to seek out that kind of work? I think that particular issue says more about how American society has evolved overall. Is it a good or bad thing that fewer Americans want to be household servants?"
Household servants, cooks, nannies: those people weren't indentured servants or slave labor any more than modern landscapers, car wash attendants, fruit pickers, short-order cooks, busboys, or maids are today. Those were good respectable jobs. They provided families much-needed services which made them very happy, and those families in turn provided their employees with much-needed salaries, meals, and other perks that made their own families happy. That work was the road to both achieving and enjoying a better life, and now it's largely gone, having been rendered unaffordable by the government.
Plenty of modern Americans would like those supposedly menial jobs, if the jobs were there. But they're not, because modern middle-class Americans, unlike their middle-class forefathers, can no longer afford to navigate the endless red tape, rules, and laws placed in their way, minimum wage laws being just one of them.
strega2010 says:
"I've been through rough patches and am not extravagant, but I'm terrified that there's no way I could make ends meet as an adult on minimum wage."
Indeed you couldn't make ends meet on minimum wage, but you'd have plenty of options, all of which I've done myself as the occasion has warranted:
1. Get a second job. (Someone working two minimum wage jobs not only could make ends meet, they could live pretty well. Of course, with a work ethic like that it wouldn't be long before you advanced at one enough to be able to drop the other).
2. Cut expenses to match income (You'd be surprised how far you can comfortably go. One doesn't need a big place or a new car or a lot of stuff littering a domicile to be happy).
3. Live with others. (move in with family, friends, or strangers, share the expenses, enjoy the camaraderie).
Of course, the best thing to do now is to prepare for that rainy day. Save as much as you can, learn to invest it wisely, make yourself as valuable as you can at your current job, learn new skills whenever possible.
GlennDamato says:
"Nearly all businesses have been affected by the "worship of the numbers" religion, and part of that is because of the consolidations we've seen with parent companies swallowing independent firms, followed by relentless pressure from the parent firm to steadily increase profits, increase market share, and cut costs every quarter – so the stock price can inch up. Managers who don't play the game don't hit their numbers and are shown the door."
There are far more independent mom-and-pop type businesses out there than companies big enough to warrant a public offering, and they employ far more people. Their biggest hurdle isn't the big conglomerates and it's not their smaller competitors, either — it's the government. By far the scariest, most difficult aspect of starting a business is dealing with all of the regulations, taxes, permits, and relevant laws regarding everything from health care to worker's comp to minimum wage. Many businesses now have ridiculously large human resource and compliance departments whose sole purpose is to conform with these regs in all of their Byzantine, soul-killing complexity, and in so doing stay out of the gaze of the roving red eye of the army of local, state, federal (and, increasingly, even international) bullies looking to steal their livelihood out from under them and "redistribute" the hard-won fruits of their Herculean labors.
And businesses worshiping the numbers is nothing new, as numerous books about the stock market and general salesmanship from a hundred years ago attest. There's nothing new under the sun, and the robber barons of today aren't any worse than the ones who built the railroads, or the steel mills, or the automobile industry. What has changed are the laws under which they operate, and it is those, I argue, that are responsible for so much of our country's industry wilting before our eyes or vanishing to foreign shores.
There was a time when our products were the envy of the world even as we made our workers the highest paid in the world. It's because we exported far more than we imported, we saved more than we spent, we didn't bail out crooks and losers, our currency was on a gold standard and thus resistant to inflation (so savings preserved its value), and not least because anyone could open a business, establish sensible hiring policies and sustainable wages, and kept far more of the fruits of their labor to reinvest and grow their business with.
"This situation has ruined the book publishing industry."
I chalk the travails of book publishers up to them being the latest example of dinosaurs resisting healthy change and being chewed up by the forces of creative destruction. They've been their own worse enemies for a long time — read author (and fellow Columbia College alum) J. A. Konrath's blog, where he describes being able to make far more from self-publishing e-books than he ever made from his print publishing deals. Book publishing is going to be fine, but book publishers are in big trouble.
"The airlines too – but the frustrating thing is, people complain about no pillows and packed flights, but they will gladly choose their airline based entirely on a seven dollar savings."
Historically there has never been a time when the airline industry as a whole has made money. Having said that, I think that people do indeed pay extra for worthwhile service — I myself fly JetBlue whenever possible, and would have no problem paying $50-$100 more for the bigger seats and cable TV they offer as standard fare on their flights. Ask yourself how JetBlue can offer these things even as other airlines stop handing out pillows. Does not JetBlue "worship the numbers," too?
"I agree that leftist meddling in the economy is a factor, but we should be careful to temper our arguments less they lose credibility and leave gaps for the other side to attack."
If the liberals commenting here so far are any indication, we have nothing to worry about.
RUFUS2009 says:
"Theatres are crashed by the pathetic society we now have, not just the wage laws."
All part of the same problem: the government, in a thousand different ways, renders people incapable of either making their lives better or defending themselves against those who delight in making their lives worse. The solution is to dismantle vast portions of it, repealing the thousands of laws and once again empowering people to make rational, sensible choices on how to run their businesses and live their lives. Freedom! That's what would change things.
Big, burly ushers with flashlight batons and stun-guns would help, too. "Don't tase me, bro!"
JeremieStep says:
"why not allow a 12 year old to have a job. Its not like we would be using kids as chimney sweeps or crash test dummies. It would probably allow the kids to take responsibility a lot sooner, and maybe give them a leg up on paying for their college education. Get the kids away form the video games and cellphone, put them to work."
Exactly right. I'm reminded of the little seven-year-old girl in the news a few months ago, assaulted by government do-gooder vampires wielding officious clipboards and Nancy Pelosi sneers, threatening the enterprising moppet with a $500 fine if she didn't immediately shut down her illegal lemonade still. Yet another example of bullies mandating all of the humanity and decency out of American life with their endless laws and fees and regulations.
You ignore the whole inflationary aspect when dealing with minimum wage laws; thus, the weasel words: "living wage". It's not that you have the guts to boycott companies on your own that don't meet your standards — no. You want to force all of society to pay what you think is best instead of allowing individuals to work for other individuals at rates that they each find acceptable. In short, you are a tyrant who is only happy when others are suffering underneath your yoke of reduced freedom — i.e. slavery. You are a modern-day slavemaster.
RedSonja says:
"Am I to believe that getting rid of the minimum wage would get companies to hire Americans over foreigners?"
If you are talking about outsourcing, then yes, eliminating minimum wage laws (along with the many other money-sucking fees, permits, taxes, and regulations that oppress modern American businesses) would bring back many of the jobs we've lost overseas. Outsourcing, contrary to popular myth, is costly and difficult and fraught with risks. Most companies do it out of raw necessity, as it's become the only way they can employ the people they need at a wage that makes sense. Once we bring the costs down (bye bye union thieves, see you later government bureaucrats) those companies would be delighted to once again build factories here and employ hardworking Americans at decent wages.
You are exactly right, because liberals are not interested in solutions. They are interested in amassing a crowd of admirers. If they actually proposed solutions to problems, people would eventually move on with their lives and no longer have need of them, which would reduce the size of the fawning crowd. So what liberals do is sell perpetual dependency — i.e. slavery with a smile.
MisterMuggle says:
"The Lincoln Cinemas in Bellevue, Washington has such a ready team of snappy uniformed ushers and usherettes, all with flashlights who deliver ole style customer service."
Glad to hear that there's at least one holdout out there raging against the dying of the light.
maatkare says:
"If he could pay $5 an hour I doubt he'd hire five more workers. The corporation that owns the theater would keep the staff at 5, and save the money. Presumably the theater makes money as it's currently run. So why would reducing the wage induce them to hire more workers?"
Because there's a magic number of employees that can be hired at any business before additional ones start costing more than they are worth, and if you cut wages that number jumps up.
Say, for example, that the presence of another usher improves service: people are now getting shown to their seats, loudmouths are shushed or removed, and as a result customers are happy. Because they are happy, they start coming more often, to the point where, say, enough new customers come in each month to increase profits by $12/hr. No company is going to refrain from hiring an employee whose presence helps increase profits by $12/hr just to "save" $5/hr.
Of course, if you keep adding employees, eventually there comes a point where adding another usher doesn't increase the customer experience in a significant way, and so that employee's presence and labor doesn't create enough additional profit to pay for the employee's own existence at the company. That's the point where hiring stops.
Modern movie theaters, though, are nowhere near that point. They know that hiring a lot more ushers would result in vastly improved customer service. But they can't hire them because they are forced to pay a minimum wage ensuring that the employee would cost more than he would bring in.
As I said, I support repealing (or lowering, which might be an easier sell) minimum wage laws because they do create problems, including those you describe. But even a small army of young people wouldn't improve the experience at a movie theater if they are all unmotivated, lazy, and surly. In fact, I don't think I've encountered any problem at a theater that wouldn't be fixed by motivation and competence rather than more people.
You really don't see it do you? The jobs will not EXIST if the value does not equal the cost. Also, teens are relevent in that they are not experienced and need to start somewhere to learn how to be a part of the workforce. If the pay scale is beyond what a business can withstand for unskilled labor, they will not bring in people to do it.
Sad to say but sorry the fed has been nosing into that too. Unpaid internships are not faaaaair. I know at my company they are increasingly not worth the restrictions.
"I tried to put myself into the Regressive/Socialist mind. ;0) LMAO"
It's hard isn't it? It's like trying to think like a 5 year old!
"The one constant in all these problems is liberalism. Everything they touch turns to crap, everything they try to improve gets worse. Their laws and fees and taxes and regulations are everywhere driving people nuts and making lives miserable. In a thousand different ways they curtail the productivity and happiness of people minding their own business and making their own way in life."
Yup, that pretty much sums it up.
Leo – thanks again for your response. As before, you make some points, but I'm unconvinced that the cultural changes you described are mainly the result of government regulations, taxes and fees.
Even without the red tape, mom and pop can't compete with the chains. Be it bookstores, restaurants, food markets or whatever, the chains can buy stock and advertising in bulk and offer better value and selection. This is not a good or a bad thing – it's just one of the many ways preferences have changed over the past decades.
You can wax nostalgic for the good old days of the small neighborhood bookstore or market, where folks knew the owner by name and relied on them for advice. But today that's not what most people WANT. The use the internet for advice. They want to strut into Borders and benefit from the huge selection and the discounts – and if the proprietor is not hovering over them, maybe that's a good thing.
And sell to whom?
Ford decided that it was in his best interest to pay his employees enough so that they could buy his product. I've no doubt that he was not a perfect person, but the notion that business persons are so entirely short sighted as to ruin the market is not supported by real world example, particularly with the history and experience available. Few jobs take no training at all, and employees tend to do the work they're paid for. You don't pay them, they might show up, but they don't work. Your imaginary world where business is so completely self-destructive as to destroy everything doesn't exist.
Also, please… the business people and the people in government…. they are the same people with the same values. Viewing one as evil incarnate and the other as angels out to protect us, wise and wonderful, is moronic.
Government and unions (and I don't see any reason at all that in the absence of a minimum wage that unions would not have a legitimate role) have done a number of destructive things. Because businesses do have a limit, just like municipalities and states… they have to budget and when the money is gone it is gone. When a union makes labor too expensive a business either fails or finds cheaper labor. Non-existent profits can not be pulled out of the aether.
As for our current rules… many schools require a certain number of hours of unpaid labor in order to graduate. Obama wanted to make this mandatory for colleges as well.
You're worried about minimum wages and our socially conscious, caring, liberal leaders are conditioning people to expect young people to work for nothing. It's really funny in a not at all funny sort of way… we can't pay them less than 7.25 (or $10 if your city is stupid enough to want to "help" poor people by upping the wage) but call it "volunteer" or "internship" and you don't have to pay a person anything at all. But tell them that the work experience will help them get a job later, that the internship will teach them what they need to know, that it will all pay off in the end… and maybe they will be *desperate* enough to work for nothing.
And the capitalists are the pigs.
Yeah, right.
Interesting dialogue. I do have to ask, though: are there any business owners here? If the minimum wage dropped or went away what, in fact, would you consider a "fair" hourly wage for your employees, skilled or otherwise? If your business runs efficiently as it's currently staffed, would a lower wage make you hire more people, or would you just enjoy more profits?
But going back to the premise of the piece: I actually don't find the movie going experience all that unpleasant, though. Even at the non-premium theaters things aren't bad. Yes, some people push it with the texting but overall it's just not that bad. I resent the price of popcorn and snacks, but then, they've always been overpriced and like many people I just smuggle my own candy bars in. So I can't say I have a need to see more uniforms scurrying about.
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