Minimum Wage Hike: Will It Help Or Hurt?

Posted by:

Denise Lockwood

Racine County Eye

23 Questions answered

Answered on February 26th, 2021

I already pay my people a living wage. Not a problem at all. Others can talk about job-killing, but I prefer to not kill my employees as consumers so that they can support my advertisers.

4 Replies

from

Feb 28th, 2021

zI don't see a problem with a $15. Is not the cost of doing business a 100% tax write-off against earnings?

Tom Daly from TMD Commercial Cleaning

Denise Since you already pay a livable wage. Does that not give you a competitive advantage? Do think you have better employees because you offer a better wage? This bill would eliminate your advantage

from

Feb 28th, 2021

At checkout, whether it be a Walmart, grocery store, HomeDepot, CVS, etc have you seen the kiosks? It is getting difficult to find a person to ring you up. This is partly due to COVID but these jobs are gone forever now. Nationwide the number of jobs lost is staggering. Call centers and back office support is handled online by bots or an IVR in record numbers. Many of those jobs are now located to Asia, Mexico, and the Philippines. It is great that some businesses are able to cover these salary increases, but for some it limits reinvesting in growth of the company that creates more jobs, or if you are a public company your shareholders require returns on their investments or else they sell and go elsewhere, which creates unemployed workers. This is how capitalism works. It goes back to a common question in this thread, why are the breadwinners of the family working jobs that only pay minimum wage?

Denise Lockwood from Racine County Eye

Great question I've written a lot about this topic. Here in Wisconsin, we don't have a job-creation problem. We have a skills problem, transportation problem, childcare problem, wage problem, education problem, too many people in jail, healthcare cost problem, people not showing up to work on time problem, transportation problem, and too many people with felonies that can't work certain jobs problem. There are a lot of innovative programs happening here. An example... in Wisconsin, a lot of companies that pay higher wages are working with the Department of Correction to recruit for manufacturing jobs after the prisoners are trained in things like CNC operating. Another example... the DOT offered up grant funding for transportation companies to take people to job interviews and for the first few months of employment for free because people here often don't have cars or reliable transportation. https://racinecountyeye.com/catch-22-skilled-wo...

from

Feb 28th, 2021

Lee McClain -- Wages, payroll, labor: it's all a cost of doing business just like the materials you put into your products or the rent for your building, the power costs, etc. Writing them off 100% against your earnings means you deduct that cost from your gross sales amounts. THEN you calculate your tax based on the net income. It doesn't mean it's free, or the government is paying for it. It just means you are not paying tax on anything but your actual earnings, or profit (what you have left to live on).

It's more complicated than that, but the key is it still costs your business---every penny of it. You have to charge more than your costs (including payroll) for your products or you will not have anything left to live on or keep the business going next week.

The most Christian thing a business owner can do is keep costs down so that everybody will have a secure job in the future. If the wages are not enough for someone, they should find a better paying job and/or get the skills to move up.

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