>> Everybody that works 40 hours a week in worth $40k a year.
RW, that is nonsense.
There are many, many 40-hour/wk jobs who cannot conceivably contribute a multiple of $40k/y to a business' profitability. As you know, a 40K/y job requires a significant multiple of that amount in incremental revenue to cover that cost, let alone for it to be profitable.
There are TONS of jobs out there that simply cannot do that, under the best of circumstances. Walmart store "associates", McDonalds order-takers are examples.
But there are many, many workers in this category. Daycare workers, for example. An important job that simply CANNOT pay much money because the margins are far too thin to permit it. And the cost of daycare cannot rise beyond where it is without the customer base getting creamed.
Hotels cannot pay housekeeping people $40K. It just isn't remotely feasible to pay that kind of money for housekeepers. Now, your argument is, "Oh, well you can pay a few dollars more for a hotel room." But you can't; because if a hotel raises its price, people will travel less, which of course, is bad for the entire economy.
You seem to be under the impression that there is some kind of free ride that can be obtained; that you can just require employers to pay more with no downside. We know, historically, that increasing the minimum wage increases unemployment (a couple weeks ago CJ tried to make the opposite argument, and was proved wrong on this very thread).
The only way for these people to be better off is to make themselves more valuable to businesses by working harder. If a housekeeping employee can clean twice the number of rooms and do a better job than the next person, then he/she will ultimately get better pay. That's how it works. |
