5 ms·

Hardly. Lowering the minimum wage isn't going to make an unskilled and lazy teenager useful. We have programs for this: * http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx ht

by readme 13y ago

Hardly. Lowering the minimum wage isn't going to make an unskilled and lazy teenager useful. We have programs for this: * http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx http://www.jobcorps.gov/home.aspx -- This provides room, board, a stipend suitable for a teenager with no expenses, and vocational training for those under 25 years old (i.e, teens) * http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ -- There's really no disputing this one. Any one of them can hoof it over to the nearest community college and get some skills and a paid work-study job. * http://www.army.mil/ http://www.army.mil/ -- Many of you probably don't like this, but it's probably the most successful organization at turning lazy teens into productive citizens, however, it carries the risk of death or dismemberment. My point, is there are many options. To split hairs over the minimum wage because 95% of 1% of kids (the approximate dropout rate) don't have jobs is nonsense. So, because these kids who did not do their civic duty are unemployed means we should lower labor standards for everyone else, including those who have to feed families, such as the parents of these very children? It can only worsen the situation. Min wage is already so low that it is not the driver to whether someone is getting hired or not. The big corporations that run most of the "small" businesses now, can pay. They just need to know they're indeed getting a valuable worker. The other thing is, a lot of that 95% can be accounted for by kids who don't want a job. They'd rather play x-box, or work as a foot soldier in the local gang. We have programs for this. Job corps, seriously. There's nothing stopping young people from working here. The jobs exist. The skills do not.

larrywright 13y ago
I found myself wondering about this as well. Some of this is quite likely legitimate unemployment, but I'm wondering what percent is laziness. That said, it's pretty easy as a middle-income white guy to cast judgement on people living in a situation I can't even dream of understanding. This is a pretty complex subject.
BadCookie 13y ago
Are you saying that the high school dropout rate is 1%? Because that's not anywhere close to being correct. It's over 25% in the United States according to this: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/high-school-graduation-rate-hits-40-year-peak-in-the-us/276604/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/high-sch...
- adient 13y ago
  Dropping out is not the opposite of not graduating; you can continue trying to graduate for several years. The actual dropout rate is 7.4%: nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16
  - BadCookie 13y ago
    Thanks for the correction. The Atlantic article should have specified that they meant the four year graduation rate. I did think that 25% seemed too high, but I knew that 1% was much too low.
jlgreco 13y ago
I think that there is value in dropping the minimum wage for teenagers dramatically, regardless of these issues. Giving teenagers another place to get yelled at for not working hard enough (besides just school and home) is clearly beneficial (as you note about the military) but the options that you list are not sufficient. They require too much of a lifestyle change which makes those programs seem inaccessible. Letting the sandwich shop down the road yell at teenagers for $4/hr is better than having teenagers go halfway across the state with Job Corps. Teenagers in rural areas already have plenty of opportunities to be employed below minimum wage, but these opportunities largely do not exist right now in urban areas. I suspect this partially accounts for the employment discrepancies in rural and urban areas. (Dropping the minimum wage for this should only be done for teenagers who have more social safety-nets than adults.)
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  This is precisely the policy that we have here in the UK. https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
- bluedino 13y ago
  > They require too much of a lifestyle change which makes those programs seem inaccessible. Letting the sandwich shop down the road yell at teenagers for $4/hr is better than having teenagers go halfway across the state with Job Corps. A lot of these kids need exactly that - a change of environment. I have a second cousin whose mother is always getting fired from minimum wage jobs, is constantly getting kicked out of apartments, and couldn't provide him with a stable home life. His dad is long gone. Job Corps provided him with a place to stay, training, and a job. But the best part of it was that he had to move an hour and a half away, close enough to visit but far enough where he wouldn't be distracted by all the trouble in our crime-ridden and poverty stricken city. They also teach personal skills and things like money management. If you don't get the kid out of the ghetto, you'll have trouble getting the ghetto out of the kid.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Oh sure, a lot of those kids definitely need the Job Corps. I wouldn't support discontinuing that program. I'm just saying that the Job Corps isn't a great fit for all teenagers, and that all teenagers would benefit from working at any sort of job (and that a lower minimum wage for teenagers would facilitate this. I think that work for the sake of work is good for teenagers, but that minimum wage gets in the way of this).
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
1123581321 13y ago
I directly disagree. Lowering minimum wage reduces the risk of hiring an unskilled and lazy teenager to train them in a job. When you look at one hour of one person's work, the difference between $9, $7, $5 and $3 an hour seems trivial. Surely the employer has a five dollar bill sitting around, right? But when you look at full work weeks of time, plus the costs of training the job, multiplied by all of the employees the company will hire, the difference in hourly wages emerges. And, equally importantly, the employer perceives this difference and given time will react rationally to a lower minimum wage. For every dollar of "labor standards" achieved, the minimum wage imposes a skill and manners floor with no ladder beneath it for people who need to get a leg up into the employment system with experience. Lowering this floor lets an employer take a chance on someone or even take a chance on two people where only one could be hired previously. Job Corps, FAFSA grants, and the military all essentially pay below minimum wage for job training without economic benefit, i.e., productivity (ignoring the various effects caused by foreign wars.) Additionally, while the training provided is supposed to bridge over neatly to employment, it never does perfectly and sometimes does not match real-world needs at all. It would be better to just let companies directly pay lower wages and also provide the training by having the employee learn the actual job instead of a simulated job.
- wisty 13y ago
  > But when you look at full work weeks of time, plus the costs of training the job, multiplied by all of the employees the company will hire, the difference in hourly wages emerges. Not really. You won't train them with a $3 / hour worker. Their timesheet won't be done by a $3 / hour worker. Their workspace and equipment will cost more than $3 / hour. If they piss off a customer, or steal from the till, or break stuff, or bully other employees, or get you sued, the cost will be the same. People in non-tech fields have to practically beg to get an internship which pays nothing. OK, internships should be about training, not work (it's the law), but we all know that's often a load of crap. That's because all staff have overhead, so even a free worker costs quite a bit.
  - 1123581321 13y ago
    I was hoping that was all understood in my post since it's all obvious to anyone who has been in business. If a business cannot tolerate unskilled workers or has limited hiring spots due to a limited number of machines, etc., then they need to hire skilled workers immediately and so are not part of what we are considering. As someone who has managed a variety of budgets, I assure you that the wage portion of an employee's total cost is still meaningful.
skylan_q 13y ago
Lowering the minimum wage isn't going to make an unskilled and lazy teenager useful. Correct. They'll just be cheaper. If value > cost, then it's worth it for a business to pursue. If something is only slightly useful, then it's still useful and still worth having at some cost.

by readme 13y ago

larrywright 13y ago

I found myself wondering about this as well. Some of this is quite likely legitimate unemployment, but I'm wondering what percent is laziness. That said, it's pretty easy as a middle-income white guy to cast judgement on people living in a situation I can't even dream of understanding. This is a pretty complex subject.

BadCookie 13y ago

Are you saying that the high school dropout rate is 1%? Because that's not anywhere close to being correct. It's over 25% in the United States according to this: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/high-school-graduation-rate-hits-40-year-peak-in-the-us/276604/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/high-sch...

adient 13y ago
Dropping out is not the opposite of not graduating; you can continue trying to graduate for several years. The actual dropout rate is 7.4%: nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16
- BadCookie 13y ago
  Thanks for the correction. The Atlantic article should have specified that they meant the four year graduation rate. I did think that 25% seemed too high, but I knew that 1% was much too low.

jlgreco 13y ago

I think that there is value in dropping the minimum wage for teenagers dramatically, regardless of these issues. Giving teenagers another place to get yelled at for not working hard enough (besides just school and home) is clearly beneficial (as you note about the military) but the options that you list are not sufficient. They require too much of a lifestyle change which makes those programs seem inaccessible. Letting the sandwich shop down the road yell at teenagers for $4/hr is better than having teenagers go halfway across the state with Job Corps. Teenagers in rural areas already have plenty of opportunities to be employed below minimum wage, but these opportunities largely do not exist right now in urban areas. I suspect this partially accounts for the employment discrepancies in rural and urban areas. (Dropping the minimum wage for this should only be done for teenagers who have more social safety-nets than adults.)

jiggy2011 13y ago
This is precisely the policy that we have here in the UK. https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates
bluedino 13y ago
> They require too much of a lifestyle change which makes those programs seem inaccessible. Letting the sandwich shop down the road yell at teenagers for $4/hr is better than having teenagers go halfway across the state with Job Corps. A lot of these kids need exactly that - a change of environment. I have a second cousin whose mother is always getting fired from minimum wage jobs, is constantly getting kicked out of apartments, and couldn't provide him with a stable home life. His dad is long gone. Job Corps provided him with a place to stay, training, and a job. But the best part of it was that he had to move an hour and a half away, close enough to visit but far enough where he wouldn't be distracted by all the trouble in our crime-ridden and poverty stricken city. They also teach personal skills and things like money management. If you don't get the kid out of the ghetto, you'll have trouble getting the ghetto out of the kid.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Oh sure, a lot of those kids definitely need the Job Corps. I wouldn't support discontinuing that program. I'm just saying that the Job Corps isn't a great fit for all teenagers, and that all teenagers would benefit from working at any sort of job (and that a lower minimum wage for teenagers would facilitate this. I think that work for the sake of work is good for teenagers, but that minimum wage gets in the way of this).

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

1123581321 13y ago

I directly disagree. Lowering minimum wage reduces the risk of hiring an unskilled and lazy teenager to train them in a job. When you look at one hour of one person's work, the difference between $9, $7, $5 and $3 an hour seems trivial. Surely the employer has a five dollar bill sitting around, right? But when you look at full work weeks of time, plus the costs of training the job, multiplied by all of the employees the company will hire, the difference in hourly wages emerges. And, equally importantly, the employer perceives this difference and given time will react rationally to a lower minimum wage. For every dollar of "labor standards" achieved, the minimum wage imposes a skill and manners floor with no ladder beneath it for people who need to get a leg up into the employment system with experience. Lowering this floor lets an employer take a chance on someone or even take a chance on two people where only one could be hired previously. Job Corps, FAFSA grants, and the military all essentially pay below minimum wage for job training without economic benefit, i.e., productivity (ignoring the various effects caused by foreign wars.) Additionally, while the training provided is supposed to bridge over neatly to employment, it never does perfectly and sometimes does not match real-world needs at all. It would be better to just let companies directly pay lower wages and also provide the training by having the employee learn the actual job instead of a simulated job.

wisty 13y ago
> But when you look at full work weeks of time, plus the costs of training the job, multiplied by all of the employees the company will hire, the difference in hourly wages emerges. Not really. You won't train them with a $3 / hour worker. Their timesheet won't be done by a $3 / hour worker. Their workspace and equipment will cost more than $3 / hour. If they piss off a customer, or steal from the till, or break stuff, or bully other employees, or get you sued, the cost will be the same. People in non-tech fields have to practically beg to get an internship which pays nothing. OK, internships should be about training, not work (it's the law), but we all know that's often a load of crap. That's because all staff have overhead, so even a free worker costs quite a bit.
- 1123581321 13y ago
  I was hoping that was all understood in my post since it's all obvious to anyone who has been in business. If a business cannot tolerate unskilled workers or has limited hiring spots due to a limited number of machines, etc., then they need to hire skilled workers immediately and so are not part of what we are considering. As someone who has managed a variety of budgets, I assure you that the wage portion of an employee's total cost is still meaningful.

skylan_q 13y ago

Lowering the minimum wage isn't going to make an unskilled and lazy teenager useful. Correct. They'll just be cheaper. If value > cost, then it's worth it for a business to pursue. If something is only slightly useful, then it's still useful and still worth having at some cost.